Problem Solving in Quilting

One of the things that I absolutely love about quilting is that there are usually multiple ways to accomplish a design ... and no one right answer.  Last night, I pulled out an old unfinished project with a few challenges–we won't call them problems ... yet.  One of the challenges that had held me back was my vision of some abstract flower shapes, made from diamonds that would be appliquéd to a pieced background. Appliquéing all those edges straight and keeping the points pointy intimidated me.

In the way that one project can inform another, I wondered if I could use English paper piecing as an appliqué preparation technique and keep all those edges straight, points, pointed and flowers looking all the same.

I wanted to maintain the same basic diamond shape–the diamonds are used in another part of the quilt.  I remembered this Little Daisy block that I had made earlier this year and thought it would work.  I used the petal and center octagon templates for this block, which were intended for hand-piecing, to create paper shapes for EPP for my test.

If you are interested, you can download the Little Daisy templates from my Freebies page.

Here's my EPP test in progress, beside the original plan. As you can see, I'm also thinking the petals would look better scrappy and that the blue petals at the base (inspired by the traditional Carolina Lily block) don't work in the new shape.  The stems and leaves will be blue on this red-blue-cream quilt.

I'm joining the linky party for Angie and Billie's Hexie Friday  ... and hoping that those with experience with appliqué of EPP shapes will offer me some tips and/or advice about my idea.

I'm also joining the Weekend Update on the Block Lotto.  (It's worth the click over, just to see what Linda's making from some colorful lotto blocks she won.)

If you came by as part of Hexie Friday to check on my progress on the tea coozy made from Regina's Star Flowers,  I finished it earlier this week (yay!) and you can read more about it here:

Star Flower Tea Cozy - Done (but Far from Perfect)