Origami Starburst

A long time ago, I met up with a friend and she taught me to make folded paper stars. Later, I found out that they are actually called starbursts.

Back in the day, I only had copy paper and I made a practice star from that. You need 16 squares of paper to make one starburst, so it is not an insignificant amount of paper and I didn’t have that much pretty paper on hand. I was pretty proud of that simple white star. At some point, I glued it together.

It was a good technique and the results are impressive, so one Christmas, not long after, DH and I folded up bunches of legs to make ornaments for gifts. We also made some larger ones as gifts and Christmas passed. Then the process kind of fell off my radar and I forgot how to make these starbursts. Sadly, I couldn’t figure out how to make them by reengineering, because I glued the one I had left together.

So, time passed, but I kept looking at that star at the top of my design wall. I started to become obsessed by making one again. I searched the web and couldn’t find instructions. I was infuriated. I am a librarian, for goodness sake, I should have been able to find one measley set of instrustions.

I firmly put the problem into the back of my mind to torture me there – uh, rumble around – and let my subconscious work on it.

One day I was on a boring call and clicked over to Pinterest to peruse while I listened. Suddenly, I saw a folded paper star!!! It finally dawned on me to search Pinterest and after trying ‘starburst’, within moments, I found instructions on a blog!!! I know I reported on this in the last V& S post.

For awhile I basked in the knowledge that I had the instructions and could make a starburst anytime I wanted.

Last week, I decided to make one to see if works. Now I can’t really stop. I haven’t been doing much scrapbooking lately, so I took some paper and made a first star. I cut the paper to 8.5″ squares and made a pretty big starburst.

Origami Starburst
Origami Starburst

Next I went, coupon in hand, and bought some special pieces of 12″x12″ scrapbook paper and make them into another even more giant starburst. The paper I picked wasn’t matchy-matchy, but it reminded me of a line of fabric that kind of had a Paris theme with lots of pink and black. I just felt like these were the right patterns and motifs.

Paper is fun and everything, but I have a lot of fabric and I began wondering if I could make a starburst from fabric. I let the idea rattle around in my head and decided that one big problem was cutting 32 pieces of square fabric – well 16 pieces of fabric and 16 pieces of interfacing. Regardless of how much I cut in other projects, it seemed daunting for this starburst. I think it was a problem in my mind, because of the uncertainty of whether it would work.

Finally, I came up with charm squares. I got a Fresh Cuts charm pack out of my drawer and picked out 16 squares that I thought would work together. I worked on it at Sew Day and then finished it at home. You need Flatter or Best Press to make the pieces really flat.

Fresh Cuts Origami Starburst
Fresh Cuts Origami Starburst

The idea worked. I think the starburst came out really well. It is a little bright and cheerful. The only thing I need to think about is how to keep it together. Normally, the tension keeps them together, but the starburst wreath is kind of fragile if it gets handled too much. Sewing or gluing are my options.

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

10 thoughts on “Origami Starburst”

    1. I know! My son chides me all the time, saying his life stopped in 2008. Perhaps I will set up a table in his room when he goes off to college and start up again. 😉

  1. Jaye, I got excited and thought you had posted a new block! So…I did go ahead and drew it up in EQ as a paper-pieced pattern. I would probably applique the center. If you want me to send you the design as a pdf, let me know.

    1. Hi Sally,
      Sorry to disappoint. 😉 I would love to see your work and will be happy to share it with my readers, if you want. Send it along to poste [at] artquiltmaker [dot] com.

      I will post a tutorial on the stars, but I used paper to take the photos, though I will talk about doing it in fabric as well.

      The final piece is pretty dimensional. It would fit in with Elly Sienkiewicz’s dimensional applique, I think, but not sure how it would be for sleeping.

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