Master Mariner?

This week at my new Quilt Group we were tackling the Mariner's Compass block. Being organised as usual (!) I only looked at the supply list, that I had been sent, the night before the class, where I discovered that instead of paper for the foundation piecing I was going to be using stabiliser. Not having any of the recommended Stitch-n-Tear to hand and with no time left to find some, I had to rummage through my stash cupboard where I eventually found this.

 I bought this roll of stabiliser whilst we were living in Latvia, so I had no idea whether it was appropriate or not.

Fortunately, the next day at the class there were several versions of stabiliser on show and a quick feel of the others suggested that this might be slightly thicker than the recommended Stitch-n-Tear but otherwise seemed fit for purpose.

We traced the templates for the block on to the stabiliser fabric and cut around the shapes roughly.

Then we stitched the fabric to the back of the stabiliser along the traced lines. I had never used stabiliser as the foundation for piecing before and found it to be much easier to manoeuvre when stitching. Also, as we didn't reduce the stitch length as you would usually do when stitching on paper, unpicking was so much easier too!

 I frequently have problems getting points to match when I am joining paper-pieced sections together, but again the more flexible stabiliser backing seemed to make even this part go much better than usual, i.e. I only had to unpick once :)

I am rather pleased with how this turned out!

For the moment the stabiliser backing is still in place so I may revise my opinion when I attempt to remove it later, but so far it has all been good. I won't be attaching the star to the backing until the next class, which is not till June, so next up is a Drunkard's Path block to bring me up-to-date. Curved seams are so not my favourite thing!

This is my first paper-piecing project for what seems like a very long time, so I am delighted to be able to link it up to