I was going to show a dyeing tutorial today, but that will have to come later in May-so for now. . .
Here is my first ever foundation pieced quilt. And it is my first ever small quilt (despite what I may have said in earlier posts, I tend to be a liar) It's about 12" x 9 1/2". I remember I got a mini rotary cutter, a mini cutting board, min pins, all for this project. Not necessary-but really fun.I could fit everything for this project in a ziplock abg. It was so pleasing. I hand quilted this one, you can't see it in this photo-and always intended to frame it-but never did, and now it seems to float around the house. The small people love it. It's really a big doll quilt.
Using this foundation technique (which is quite old, I'm told, sometimes called English paper piecing) was a HUGE breakthrough for me because I was/am not super accurate at cutting and piecing and this fool-proof method really gave me so much confidence. So-the deal with paper piecing is that you sew your fabric strips/blocks to a piece of paper that has your sewing lines marked for you. You sew on a piece of fabric wrong side down to the paper block, flip and iron, and then do it again-then when you have sewn all the pieces in order-and you join your blocks, and rip off the paper. You can make one block, perfect for pin cushions, embellishment on clutches, or handbags, you name it-or make more and make a quilt out of the blocks. You can even go big, and make a standard size quilt with this method, like grammie did here (although paper piecing an entire big quilt involves lots of paper removal, not a fun thing to do.)
I love the scale of these together-what a huge cat!
Here is a tutorial and here is a great resource site and here are some free patterns you can print from home! (house and cat above plus more) I can go on explaining this technique for a long time-but these sites do it better. Also- you can design your own-very cool possibilities.
I have 3 tips to add:
1.THIS IS EASY, so if it seems hard at first, stick with it.Once you have the light-bulb moment, you will be happy. If it seems way too hard you are doing it wrong (I do this all the time!)
2. This would be a great first quilt project. You can do a mini quilt with the top, batting, and binding, and practice all the techniques for putting a quilt together and not have to spend a ton of $$$ and time (also, the precise nature of the foundation piecing method makes tiny quilts super easy)
3. Don't do what I do-I get a bit "frugal" and often cut my strips too small. This is a horrible thing to do because it makes the whole thing a huge struggle, and I have to change seam allowances, and it's a huge headache. Leave yourself plenty of room.
