tldr;

Uh oh.
That pile of paper and scraps can only mean one thing--paper piecing!



Doesn't look like much, does it?
Yes, nearly all of the blocks this week were paper pieced. While it makes everything look nice and crisp and pretty it means a tremendous mess by the time all is said and done. Luckily Faith-Ann was kind enough to tolerate so much paper passing over her throat plate--although my first stop after this blog post is done is to eBay to order some more needles for her!

Getting better, but...

Ah, much neater.
One of the many things I'll be looking for at the Lancaster show is a nice quilt wall--I'd like to take pictures of my blocks head on, instead of on the floor where kittehs can get at it and cause a mess. There's a nice big area by the door I could hang it up and take it down.

Chain-pieced HST's.
One thing I need to remember when I'm working on these blocks is to scale down their measurements when I use my quick-piecing method. While I completely agree with the reasoning that it's better to cut down than to try to sew to size I don't much care for making my quick HST's and finding I could have made them much smaller and saved a ton of fabric. Sigh. At least I got that package of fabric from Fabric.com.

So pretty and precise.
I always go back and forth on how I press my seams. If it looks like the seams are going to be huge, I tend to press them open. For example, when I'm doing the final assembly of a block. But if I'm trying to align things really nicely, then it's helpful to have the seams to one side so I can 'lock' the alignment in place.

What shape is this supposed to be?
Ah, I see what you did there.
So, in the interest of maintaining my pledge to 'show my process' and show my mistakes, here's a real humdinger of a mistake. I had finished piecing the points of the star shape, and was about to tackle the angled seams. I was all pumped, took my time, and found I had a beautiful seam, stopped in the right place, and was about to start on the second side when I noticed something.

UT OH.
'That's funny', I said. 'It doesn't make much sense to have all of this be red. And I don't have much of a seam allowance to work with here. I wonder what's going on?' So I checked the instructions for the block.

Daaaaangnabbit!
Oops. :) It turned out to be a good thing though--I'd forgotten to add an extra 1/4 of an inch to the freezer paper template, so I would have had to redo the block even if the background was supposed to be red.

All fixed.
The good news is that even with my silliness the block turned out awesome. I'm not at all intimidated by angled blocks now, not with how easy it was with Ann's tips from the house block.

How pretty is this?
You might have noticed that it looks like I did a ton of blocks on Saturday. You'd be right--I plowed through all the blocks and finished them all save for the applique one. The only reason I managed to pull this off was because I took the time Friday night to cut all the fabric for this set of blocks. I feel kinda like a kid who's blown through all their Halloween or Easter candy. But without all the guilt and upset stomach stuff. So, win win!

Eurgh, so messy.
Oh, that's what you were going for!
The finished result. Not as nice as I wish it
was, but still a neat block.
I'm sorry if this post is long winded, but I did a ton of work yesterday. I'm really surprised I didn't just pass out last night. I'm trying to make sure I'm caught up with the JT2 blocks and my own projects before my birthday and Mass Effect 3 come around, because that is going to suck up a ton of my time.

Awaiting applique.
Whew!
So that's what I got up to yesterday! Sadly, I don't get Monday off (Glenn does, booo!), so I won't have any bonus posts or anything tomorrow. But, perhaps this weekend I'll have an early birthday present to show off thanks to my wonderful grandmother--we'll have to see how fast the mailman is!

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week, same time, same place.

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