Patchwork Star Decorations

Happy New Year to everyone. 
Here's wishing you all that you wish for yourselves.

No New Year resolutions for me just hopes that I manage to see my far off family members more often and we all stay healthy and happy.

We returned home, a couple of days ago, after visiting the Brighton Belles and whilst it was so lovely to see them it was such a long journey to take at this time of year. It was almost 6 hours coming home but it took us an horrendous 8 hours to get there due to the backlash of major problems on British Rail. The roads were extremely congested as everyone took to the roads to get home after Christmas, instead of travelling by train. 

After snow the previous night, we happily set off on a sunny morning, so pleased that the weather had cleared and really looking forward to seeing the Brighton branch of our family. We were oblivious that it would take us two and a half hours just to travel the first 30 miles of our 230 mile journey.

During the daylight hours I stitched away whilst poor DH valiently drove the car. I had taken fabric and threads and a few ideas to play with but there is a limit to crafting in the car. It has to be simple and straightforward so here's my results and at least I had something to show for sitting in the car for sooooooo long. 

A tad late for Christmas Decorations, I know, but at least I am a step ahead for next year!

 I doubt if anyone will want these instructions now that Christmas 2014 is over but I am posting them as a reminder to myself incase I want to make more for Christmas 2015.

The star decorations are so simple to make and are even easier if a fabric glue pen is used to stick down the pieces before adding a few stitches to attach the beads. 
I left in the base  template card to weight them and make them firmer. 

There are plenty of free templates on the web just trim them to the sizes you prefer. 

Using contrasting colours for large and small templates cut fabric 1 cm bigger than templates. 
Cover smaller card pentagons of desired size (I used 5cm template) by tacking or gluing. 
A smaller card template is needed for each star decoration but only one larger template is needed as this can be reused, over and over.

Cut fabric 1 cm bigger all round than the larger template (I used 6.2 cm template).

Press down 1 cm of fabric over the card. 
Remove fabric (saving the card template to use again) and tack or stick down the folded, pressed, 1 cm edge.

Position the smaller covered pentagon onto the larger pentagon, as in picture.
As you can see, the smaller pentagon does not quite meet the edges to allow the larger pentagon to fold over sufficiently.

Fold over the points of the larger fabric pentagon on to the smaller one.  
Glue down, or pin and stitch, to the smaller pentagon. 
This forms the star centre as shown in pic below. 

Stitch beads to the star points. 
(Beads could easily be attached whilst stitching around points is in progress.)

Add a hanging cord or ribbon.