First Paper Piecing Assignment Completed

As you may recall, I have been learning up a storm with Craftsy. For the Mastering Foundation Paper Piecing course with Carol Doak, I started off by making some cute 3-inch squares. They were more interesting and less intimidating than the course assignment. Last night, I finished free motion quilting my first assignment. It’s a Sunflower Fun Foundation block. It wasn't difficult, but since all of my points and corners are not perfect, maybe it was more complicated than I thought! I still need to bind the project. As soon as it's done, I'll add a picture.

completed block

Sunflower Fun Foundation Block - partially done

Carol Doak suggested that since we had to make 4 blocks that are the same, that we use a production method (i.e. doing the same thing on all fours blocks before going on to the next part). That worked well until about half way through the project. Then I couldn't wait to see what the block would look like, so I completed one block before making the other three.

As I mentioned earlier, I thought I was following the lines, but somewhere, I must have gone off since my points were certainly not the same on all 4 pieces. I’ll have to pay attention to that in the next project.

I really enjoyed free motion quilting the project. I drew the border and tried to follow the lines. I was getting pretty good near the end. That probably means I should have practices more. I also tried out the free motion stitch that looks like a rainbow. I think that it was very effective. It was neat trying out different free motion stitches for the various parts of the quilt.

I used a very good quality gray thread in the bobbin. Since I don’t have that many good quality threads to match the top, I ended up trying some cotton thread of lesser quality on top – it worked out fine. It looks like my machine is mostly finicky about the bobbin thread it uses. Bonus!

What did I learn?

• I can do production piecing only up to a certain point, after that, I don’t have the patience to wait to see the final result.
• I need to practice following those lines!
• Some more good quality thread, especially for the bobbin would be a good investment.(Any excuse to shop!)

Update! See the final version.