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

Blocks and Bees

Well it seems like such a long time since I have posted, but that might be because my last two posts were scheduled to appear whilst I was on holiday. Now that we are back from our amazing trip, which I will definitely bore you with once I have worked my way through the hundreds of photos I took, it is time to get back down to earth with a bump and start looking at my commitments for May.

Before that though a quick peek of the patchwork inspiration I was surrounded by on holiday :)

Tiling, Uzbekistan

My head is spinning with possible patterns for quilts and blocks!

Speaking of blocks I came home to lots of happy mail from my month in April as Queen Bee of the Fat Stash Brit Bee. There were still a few blocks to come when I took this photo but here is how the blocks are looking so far.

The blocks are destined to be a quilt for our youngest son, but my niece is expecting her second baby this week, so if it is a boy it may just end up going his way instead :)

For May, Rachel has asked us to make a floating star block with tone-on-tone blacks as the background for all but the middle and cheerful scraps for the triangle corners that make up the star. I had never come across this block before, but I really liked it so will be squirrelling away the instructions for future use.

The next meeting of my new Quilt Group is on Wednesday so I have also been trying to make some attempt to catch up on the blocks that I missed at the beginning. The first block the group attempted was a Log Cabin block, so that was first on my list.

Stupidly, I used a lone fat quarter of a white tone-on-tone for the background of my first block, blithely assuming that it would be no problem to buy extra when I needed it. Needless to say, neither of the LQS's had the same fabric in stock, so I went for the nearest alternative in the hope that when it is cut up the difference between the two fabrics won't be so noticeable!

At the class on Wednesday we will be tackling a Mariners' Compass block, should be interesting :)

Thanks to everyone who linked up in my absence to

and

 I really enjoyed reading about your projects on my return.

Finally, another shot of more stitching inspiration, EPP anyone??

Linking up to