I’ve been doing a little christmas sewing for myself this week aaand using up some practice paper piecing blocks. The big surprise here is that I did not turn them into potholders ! I have to admit that I did think about it though 🙂
I made these blocks about a year ago with no particular end use in mind, I just liked them and wanted to practice paper piecing. I had a fair selection of christmas fabric in my stash so the fabric selection was easy. The first block is called a seven point star and is available for free here.
7 point star
The second paper pieced block is called Diamond Star and is also a free template available here. Both blocks are 10.5″ unfinished.
I have been wanting to put something/anything on point for several weeks now… So I decided to treat these blocks as I would economy blocks in order to put them on point. I’m not particularly good at math so I employed a few different strategies. The first was to see if anyone else had done the math for me and I found this great tutorial by Melanie. The second was to follow Allison’s double check, scrap paper, method to make a paper cutout before I cut into my fabric. Unfortunately I didn’t think of taking pictures during my progress but the square of fabric I cut was 19″. I made two diagonal cuts, resulting in 4 triangles and sewed one to each side of my 10.5″ block. There was a small amount of trimming and squaring up done. I then quilted the 18.5″ block, made an envelope style back, layered and bound as I would a quilt.
The second pillow was even harder than the first to get a decent picture of. I think my camera hates red.
…and the backs
This is the second set of pillows I have made. For the first set I used zipper closures and I have to say that even though this envelope style is faster, I prefer the look of the zipper closure.
Thanks so much for having a look, enjoy your weekend !
Linking up with CrazyMomQuilts for Finish it up Friday.
PieceMakerQuilts 
Dec 11, 2015 @ 14:17:48
Beautiful cushions Colleen. I like the curved effect the pad gives to the designs. I’ve promised myself more learning time in 2016 so I’ll keep those links to the foundation piecing patterns and have a go ☺ Thank you for the mention too ☺
LikeLike
Dec 13, 2015 @ 08:41:01
Thanks Allison. There seems to be no end to the learning, and that’s a good thing 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dec 12, 2015 @ 17:33:13
Beautiful, Colleen! Have you seen the All in One Quilters Reference Tool?? It also has useful charts for fabric requirements.
LikeLike
Dec 13, 2015 @ 08:33:08
Thanks Tracey, No, I haven’t seen that book but I just looked it up on Amazon. It looks like it would make a good christmas present 🙂
LikeLike
Dec 13, 2015 @ 11:14:25
OH! Sooo envious – you have snow!!!! I like your stars very much and they deserved to be pillows! I have that same black curly-cue solid … I loved it so much and finally used it all up.
Your paper piecing skills are great!
LikeLike
Dec 14, 2015 @ 06:41:47
Thanks Jody, I’m definitely still developing my paper piecing skills. Some angles still have me tearing my hair out. I was really pleased to find that I had enough of that black to finish the pillow. We are getting some more snow this morning. We usually have more at this time of year and I hope we will get a nice cover but not too much as I have to be on the highways several times this week.
LikeLike