The Top Is Done

In my previous post, I shared the beginnings of my silk dupioni Storm At Sea quilt.  I have been sewing away. I finished it today.  It has been an up and down journey - a love and hate affair.

It has taken me much longer than I expected.  Why is it when you are nearing the finish line, so many things can go wrong?

This layout was in my last post.  I took my time putting it together.  The paper makes it difficult to piece the blocks together.  They slip. To get the most precise points, I baste them together first with the longest machine stitch on my machine.  Then I go in and make adjustments, if necessary, by removing a section of the basting stitches.

This is how the main body turned out:

The patterns in the design really are starting to show now. Can you see the curved lines?

There are several options for finishing and I chose one that would accentuate one of the patterns:

I really love this layout.  It really accentuates the curved medallion,but OOPS!,  do you see my mistake in the upper left corner?  Ratz! So I ripped and fixed and added the outer borders. Some very naughty words came out of my mouth as I realized I put one border on wrong side out and then when I went to rip it out, I realized I took off the wrong border.  But finally the top is done.  Yay!

I added the skinny colored border using scraps.  It added just a little pop of color.
This is what tge back looked like when I was finished .  The papers are all a bit ragged at this point.

I shorten the stitch length when stitching to the newsprint paper foundation.  

This helps the paper to come off easily.

My set up here isn't conducive to quilting, so I will roll it up onto one of those swim noodles and try to come up with a plan to quilt it when I return to PA.

In the meantime, if you haven't done any paperpiecing and would like to try, I designed a simple little birdhouse quilt a bunch of years ago.  You can get the free pattern  HERE.

Free Paper Piecing Pattern

My last post was a tutorial on how to paper piece.  After thinking about it overnight, I had this idea that maybe it would be a good idea if I offered an actual pattern for those of you that want to try it.  So I designed this birdhouse pattern that you can play around with.  It is certainly suitable for beginners and it is quite versatile if you want to play with it.

Here is the pattern.  To print you own copy of it, place the cursor over it and right click with your mouse.

Click on Copy Image.  Then open Microsoft Word.  right click with your mouse and then click on paste.  The pattern should appear.   If you then click on it, you can adjust the size.  My pattern size was 8"High x 4" Wide. 
So following the directions in the previous post, my paper pieced birdhouse looks like this:


Then I decided to make a bunch of them and create a small wall hanging.  I varied the height of each birdhouse, added extra sky to the top of each one and varied the height of the grass. I ended up with this piece that measures 16"x23".