I knew zero about paper piecing when I started this project. This includes not realizing that perhaps one ought not learn how to paper piece on a really complex design.
This is the first paper pieced square I completed. Holy shit. Those glasses had me swearing up a storm, poking my fingers, questioning my spatial reasoning, and praying for the death of geometry.
Lesson 3: Don’t start with one of the hardest things you’ll attempt as the FIRST THING you try.
I also tried to do a TARDIS. It didn’t go well. You’ll note, there is no TARDIS on my completed quilt.
Pintrest and google are your friend at this stage. Thanks to Pintrest, I found an amazing site for a Harry Potter quilt in Fandom in Stitches. The patters are all free and very easy to use. I adore this site.
The glasses were the first square I attempted. This was given a 3/5 difficulty rating. I was attempting to make it while going to YouTube quilting tutorials to figure out what the heck I was doing (I’d literally never ever done this technique before). May fave of the tutorials I watched is by Jennifer Mathis. The big clue should have been the simple design she was doing with paper piecing.
Lesson 4: Don’t overtrim. I over trimmed. I can see it here. I can see it in the quilt. I should have left WAY more fabric over on the bottom of those glasses for seam allowance. I didn’t. That’s my bad, not the patter designers. She warned me.
By the time I got to the owl, paper piecing wasn’t nearly as tough. I started figuring it out and being able to get an eye for the direction things should go. Still needed to be better at the overtrimming part, though.
I also used this site for the following “special” blocks:
- Picture Frame (2)
- Side Leaning Book
- Plant
- Stack of books (2) (I think this is my favorite of the book-only special blocks)
- Beer stein
- Open Book (3)
The only other special block on there is the paper airplane, which I got as a free online pattern. Although, when I went back to find this page, I looked at her other patterns and she has some serious talent–lots of free patterns and some you’d have to pay for. It’s worth it to spend some time poking around to find patterns you like.
The BiblioFiles 