I stumbled upon this cool tutorial over at
Sofie Legarth's blog. It's in Danish, so I endeavored to make an English version because I'm crazy about these super easy, no sew stars!
Cut 4 strips of fabric 3" wide and 10"-12" long (8 x 30 cm)
Fold in half long ways, open up, and fold the raw edges to meet each other. (I found it easy if I ironed the half to give me a line to iron the thirds to.) Press so you have nice crisp folds.
Fold this tube almost in half, leaving one end longer by about 1" Four of these tubes make one star!
Arrange your tubes so each fold is eating a raw end. Omn nom nom!
Tighten so they are all snuggled together, but not too tight.
They won't be happy stars if they are so close they wrinkle their neighbor.
Important Note: Make sure your short ends are all on one side, likewise the longer ends should be to their own side. This will make the folding bit go much more smoothly.
Flip (or not) your baby star over to you have all the long ends facing you. Fold these over each other clockwise, slipping the last one over the third and under the first tube. This locks the whole shebang together. Snug things up again so it all looks happy.
You should have eight little raw tube ends from each side of the central square.
Now comes the cool folding bit!
Starting with either the longs or the shorts, fold each tube under itself to form a triangle, fold under again to form a pyramid. Be sure to do all the longs OR all the shorts, but don't alternate. Tugging things snug while you go along helps too.
Fold this in half, and tuck the raw end under the closest loop. ( I like to trim my longies before I tuck during this step, but do what works best for you.) Use your fingers, needle-nose pliers, or the tip of a closed pair of scissors to help poke that wee tube through the loop.
Once you have one side folded, repeat for the other.
Trim back the long ends of the tubes so they hide under their loops, and admire your handiwork!
I sewed a couple of these to pin backs so I could proudly display my handiwork, but you can also punch a hole through your star (Try using a leather punch) and thread a pretty ribbon or string through. Hang them on a tree or attach to a gift.
As you go along, be sure to gently tug on neighbor tubes to keep things snug and happy. I thought about putting a dab of glue on some of the ends (my shorties are quite short) but I want to see if it manages to keep itself together without. Seems cozy enough to me. Alternatively you could also tuck some wee stitches between each star point if glue seems too gauche to you.
Have fun!
EDIT: after wearing mine on my coat for the past few days AND tossing some extras into a bag to stitch later, you should tack the tucked under ends if these are going to get any kind of rough use. Anything more than an ornament hung up once a year should, probably, get a little extra TLC. <3
