How Many Ways ...

How many ways have you used freezer paper in quilting?

When I was thinking about a way to make this month's paper-foundation-piecing block pattern for the Block Lotto in a non-paper-piecing way, my first thought was, "freezer paper."  I'll tell you what I did and how it worked for me, but first, some eye candy–my butterfly blocks for the Block Lotto (top three) and for my rainbow scraps sampler (bottom four).

One of these butterfly blocks is NOT like the others ... because it wasn't paper pieced. 

I started by printing the foundation pattern on an 8 1/2 by 11-inch piece of freezer paper (which I had earlier cut and weighted to make it flat enough to make my printer happy.  

Then I carefully cut the pattern apart on the lines. 

Because the left and right sides of the butterfly are mirror images of each other, I only cut apart one side and the center.

I then ironed my freezer paper templates to the wrong side of the appropriate fabrics.  The fabrics that make up the two sides of the butterfly are folded right-sides-together. Using a ruler and a rotary cutter, I added 1/4-inch to each edge and cut all the pieces I need ... until I realize that one of the pieces I cut from background should have been orange. Oops.

I sewed the pieces together in the numbered order–the same order as you would add the fabrics to the foundation, if you were paper-piecing the block.

Your mileage may differ, but I still managed to goof and sew the first two small triangles together the wrong way on one side.  I chalked it up to my spatial dyslexia.

Because I didn't trim the extended seam lines of the points, aligning some of the pieces was a little tricky and some caution was needed there, but the block went together quite quickly.

After each side and the center was sewn, it went together just as it's foundation pieced version.

The first block was probably more of an effort for me than just paper piecing the block and felt a little less precise than a paper pieced block, but when I was done, I liked the result, I liked having no paper to remove and I found myself thinking about making the blocks for my Old MacDonald's Mystery Sampler using this technique.

And ... I have now used freezer paper in yet another way for quilting ;-)

The Weekend after the FNSI

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Orange.

Orange who?

Orange you going to blog about the results of your Friday Night Sew In?

On Friday, I finished cutting almost 800 orange triangles ... and I spent some time over the weekend sewing together triangle squares and making broken dishes blocks. It was a whole lot of chain sewing and pressing ...

These are twelve of the 21 blocks I'm making.

The real fun is coming ... when the orange blocks are done, I'll add them to the yellow, green, blue, purple and red ones and start playing on the design wall.

Scrap-Happy Saturday Night

There's something about being around a bunch of beautiful quilts at a quilt show that makes me want to rush home and quilt.

Tonight I made a couple more scrappy Oak Leaf blocks in orange and brown–last month's and this month's colors for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Here's my set of blocks for the year so far.

I have fallen behind on a couple of my RSC projects ... but this one is current again.