Kew Quilt — Yowza!!!!

Yesterday I had one of the sides finished and was excited to see how the next side would work. Here is the process that I used to piece each side…..

First, I drew the design using “Golden Threads Quilting Paper”.

It is thin and easy to see thru for tracing a pattern and super easy to tear off after the fact. I also like that it won’t tear if you have to rip out and re-do…..ask me how I know!!!!

Anyway, here is the pattern drawn out…..

When I drew out the first side, I made the decision that, since the lines themselves were so wide, I would use the outside of the line as my design. This meant that the colored sections were a bit wider but I think that it worked well.

Here are the steps to paper piecing….

Line the fabric up with the previous piece that was already sewn in place, matching the marking to the circular line…..

I normally don’t pin but since these seams were long, I opted for a few pins along the way….

Now I turn the piece over and sew on the reverse side, following the drawn line….

Iron the new piece out…..

And then comes the magic….

I used a straight edge to fold the NEXT piecing line over……

Placed the “Add-A-Quarter” ruler over it…..

…..and cut along the added quarter inch…..

The result is that now I have a good line to follow when I place the next piece!!

This ruler makes Paper Piecing SO much easier and I will do a review of it in the next day or two!!

As the night wore on, I made a few mistakes, including piecing from the wrong side of the paper…..

….meaning that everything was reversed!! Fortunately I only did THREE seams this way!!

At one point, I used two grey fabrics together instead of moving to the next in the gradation. I will honestly say that I debated long and hard about whether I wanted to rip out those FOUR seams to fix it, but in the end, I did just that.

Sometime around 11:00pm I put the final stitch in the side and laid it out on the wall to see how it looked…..

Yowza!!!

Needless to say, I went to sleep happily dreaming of firework stripes!!!

The final step will be to join the three pieces. I have always been thinking about applique, but maybe I should try piecing???? I will have to think about that!!!