Lessons Learned & How I Became Friends with Paper Piecing

So, Block #15 in The Splendid Sampler™, Family Affair, had me in a bad place for a while.  The design is great, Janice Ryan did a fab job of designing the paper piecing pattern and she also provided plenty of pictures on her site.  The problem was with me.  I went into this one with a cocky attitude, you know like, “Paper piecing, pffaff – I got this – easy peasy. It’s stitching on paper, what’s so hard about that?” 

What was hard was that I didn’t keep my mind open to really learning an alternate way of quilt piecing.  I walked away from my sewing room many times and took solace in my knitting needles – {story for another day}

However, I persevered – read through the instructions multiple times, carefully studied the photos from Janice’s blog, turned my brain upside down and sideways and managed a final product!

Not too shabby for my first time with paper piecing.  I have some heavy seams because I forgot to go back and trim when needed, but my mind was so focused on proper fabric placement and sewing on the solid line seam allowances, so I think I did good.

Here’s a look at the back side.  You can see where my seams are a bit thick and a few pieces of paper left over. {I didn’t do a lot of the backstitching as suggested, so some of my stitch lines were a wee bit fragile.}

The plus side of this?  I learned a new technique to use with blocks that have smaller areas and tighter corners.  I like the crispness and how sharp the lines, even the thinnest ones, and points come out.

I will be looking for more paper piecing opportunities in the future and I just may go back to some of the earlier blocks that provided paper piecing templates – stay tuned!