Glinda Quilts

Super Sewing Saturday :)

I have had a good day. I made a start on 'USA #5' for cousin June and I've achieved alot. Admittedly, I actually started a few nights ago with researching patterns, drawing the design, then choosing which fabrics for the different blocks - I was lucky to have so much to choose from and I sewed the easy six x 9-patch blocks on Thursday night.

Here's a close-up of one of them (all 6 are slightly different but each of them have a repeat few squares to tie the different fabrics together):

Today I have paper pieced the remaining 4 blocks and struggled, but got there, with the last 3 'stars'. So, all 13 blocks are done ... yay!!

The hardest part about the paper-piecing was having to sellotape two bits of paper together so they'd make a big enough piece for my 11" block design. After that, thanks to previous practice I was confident to continue. I drew the square in a square by folding the paper in half lengthways and widthways to get the centre points and then repeating:

Using the window as my 'light box' to line up the next piece:

I love watching the way it comes together and the clean lines you get from paper-piecing make the extra work worthwhile:

Using a pin to keep the next piece straight:

So easy sewing on the line:

The first square in the square:

Using two pins as the pieces get bigger:

Nearly there:

Voila!! It really doesn't take any longer once you get going and with 1 done, the next 3 took even less time :)

Next, onto the 'stars' and this was tricky! Why? I'm not sure, I think it's because I'm going for an 11" finished block ... maybe, it would have been easier with a 12" finished block because I experimented with two different size rows and I was ending up with a finished 12.5" then 11.5" until I finally worked it out:

The hardest part was getting the 'flying geese' block to match up on its points and even after 3 attempts, it still wasn't right but the block was at last measuring 11" so I could go ahead and cut all the pieces:

I had to accept it wasn't going to be perfect. I'm still very pleased with this:

And here they all are waiting to be sashed and I've decided to set out the blocks 'on point' so I will need to work out (somehow!) the size of the side and corner triangles tomorrow. Very excited to see this one coming together:

I LOVE QUILTING!!! :)