Road Trip Quilt Along Day 13 -Midland Arkansas, Missouri Star Block

Staying ahead with my blocks, we'll be in Arkansas for another day, but this block will be for the state of Missouri, which is next on the list!  This one is Missouri Star,

Our first stop today was to visit the Fort Smith National Cemetery.  My husband's great uncle was a pilot who was shot down during WW2.  We didn't have too much trouble finding the grave and paying our respects.  This was a very nice cemetery with several monuments honoring our veterans.  It was a pleasant day, no more rain and it was pleasantly hot.

The next order of business was to try to find his Great Grandfathers farm.  He was only three when he visited there, and had some recollection, and we had a picture taken many years ago.  We started out at the courthouse, and didn't find anything there, but did find a clue from googling a highway marker on the picture we had.

A statue in Fort Worth caught my eye, so I grabbed a quick photo as we headed out of town!

Our clue was a dead-end, so we decided to go find the cemetery where his great-grandfather was buried.  It doesn't look like it, but it was quite hot out there!

As we were coming into the cemetery, a lady was leaving.  We chatted a bit, and she told us where to look for the grave we wanted.  We showed her a picture of the house we wanted to find, and she said she knew right where it was!  She gave us directions, and told us to watch out for the dog.  The house is unlived in, but apparently is owned by someone in the neighborhood.

My husband remembered a pond behind the house, so we drove, and found that, too!  We were very happy with our success in finding some of his family history.  We loved the area around Midland, it was very serene and peaceful.  If we ever leave Oregon, we might try to find something around here!  

Three inch block - tricky, but you can do it!  For this size, you'll work with sew and flip triangles to make those floating triangles.

Six inch block, looking good!  Sew and flip triangles make this unit as well.  I neglected to add that these triangles should be trimmed to 2 inches in the original version of the instructions.  If you want to download the corrected version, I've added that to the instructions.

 Nine inch block - by now I was well practiced at it!  For this one, you'll use triangles cut to size and construct like the Flying Geese we've already been making.  

Here are some more specific instruction on making this in the three and six inch sizes:

Line up your sewn half square triangle on the right side of the rectangle.  Make sure the dark triangle is pointing to the corner that you will be sewing into.  

Sew on the line, then trim 1/4 (or less on the 3 inch block) from the seam.

Press out toward the pieced triangle, then add the next pieced triangle to the opposite side.

Draw a line across the pieced triangle, then stitch along the line.

Trim and press toward the pressed triangle.

The completed unit will look like this. It looks pretty tricky, but it's really not that hard to sew!