Coloring for Quilters

I'm pretty sure everyone in the Northeast feels the same as I do; but I can't help saying it anyway: I WANT SPRING!! I am pretty tired of the snow and freezing days, and I wasn't to get back to work. As some of you may know, I started working on a farm last year, and found it to be a very rewarding, and physically demanding, job. The only problem is that Connecticut winters make for a very slow few months, and I am going a bit stir crazy with the lack of work.

I've been spending a lot of time at my sewing machine lately, and it has turned out some good results. Three quilts have been completed (all starting from various stages of doneness) and I am working on the fourth one now. Most of the time, I make quilts that are simple piecing- no art quilts, nothing too complicated with tiny pieces or curves or intricate designs. That isn't to say that they are necessarily easy... you have to remember to throw a whole lot of human error into the mix!

But on to the qui

lt I am working on now. This particular one was started over a year ago, in January of 2013. It is part of a "Block of the Month" club, and I started it as part of a group, along with my mom, her cousin, and a family friend. The purpose of this was to stay connected even though our weekly Craft Night festivities had ended. Unfortunately, life got in the way, and I never got very far along into my blocks. When I picked it back up a couple of days ago, I had two and a half blocks done. That was it. So the first day, I finished the half block that I was missing, and then took stock of what fabrics I had and what instructions I had on hand, and which ones I needed to dig up on the computer. The fun thing about this block of the month is that they are all paper pieced stars, and I don't do paper piecing very often! I am enjoying the change of pace from my normal type of project.

Today I got to work on the next block- the April block, which is also known as the Black Hole Star. I had a great time sorting through my fabrics and picking which color was going to go where. There are a lot more pieces in this one as opposed to the last three, so I used almost every color in my project stash! As I was playing with it today, I thought to myself that paper piecing like this is somewhat like coloring in a coloring book. As long as you stay within the lines, you can't mess up too badly.

For those of you who have never seen paper-piecing, I took a few pictures of what I was up to today to give you a sense of how it works. You print out the templates on regular printer paper (you could use lighter weight paper if you had it, but I don't,

so...) and cut out the pieces of fabric you need according to the pattern directions.

Then It's a matter of following the lines and sewing and cutting as you go to get the design. The only major issue I ran into today was when I stopped paying close attention and sewed a piece of fabric on upside down! That was a bit of bummer since I had been doing so well today, but I just ripped out the stitches and tried again. Luckily, the piece of fabric was big enough that I could just reposition it and try again rather than cut a new piece from my stash.

The two newest additions to my quilting studio have also been proving to be the

most helpful. For Christmas, my mom gave me a small bottle of the lavender scented Mary Ellen's Best Press and new spools of Aurifil thread. Best Press is a liquid starch alternative for ironing and pressing. One of the nice things about it is that, unlike starch, it dries completely clear, so there's no noticeable residue on your fabric. Hooray! The other wonderful thing is that it helps keep your fabric right where you want it during quilting projects. I use it now when I press my binding before putting on a quilt because it just halls keep that long snake of fabric folded in half nicely. I don't really want to go through all that pressing just to have it fall open while I'm sewing! And the Aurifil thread is just a dream to work with. It doesn't gum up my machine with dust as much as some other threads will, and I love how strong it is for such a thin thread (it comes in different weights, but to be honest, I have no idea what I have!).

So today during my sewing I decided to use the Best Press on the paper piecing project. One I had a piece completed and had removed the paper from the back, I gave it a spritz and pressed it flat so that I knew all those pieces were right where I wanted them. It think it helped a lot when I attached the two triangles to form the first quarter of my block. There are a lot of seams in a very small area, so that makes it difficult for my machine to sew evenly through it.

I was paying close attention to the point where the yellow, coral, and light blue meet up with the pink line. I knew it was going to be a bit of a "danger zone" and I didn't want those fabrics to slip out of place and mess up the symmetry. A few pins

and some Best Press later, and I think I got it! It was even more imperative to keep everything aligned when I was putting two of my quarter pieces together. I think I got it done alright- that pink line around the center star will really stand out, so I want it to look good. So now half of my Black Hole Star is completed, and I think it's time to take a break and get some dinner with friends. I don't want any more upside down fabrics!

Wish me luck on the rest!