Monday, July 30, 2012

Design Wall Monday - Paper Piecing Frenzy

I have a love/hate relationship with paper piecing.  I hate to get started on a small paper piecing project, but once I get my mind to reverse itself and get with the program, then I love the precision that results from it.

At the retreat last week I took many of my UFO's from a long time ago.  One of them was my Purple Pineapple blocks.  I'm embarrassed to say this was started in a class with Jane Hall at the International Quilt Show in Houston in 2000.  To think I could still find it in my sewing room was a miracle. I really need to get some of these old ones finished.  It took me almost half the morning to figure out how to do it again!!  These are tiny little logs - 1/2" in size.  The colors I used were not the best for this pattern. I needed more contrast with my diagonal fabric to make it show up better.   There are 45 tiny pieces in each block and the finished block only measures 6 inches!  What was I thinking??
Here is what I was thinking -- remember this was 12 years ago and I was new to this technique.  I chose the middle fabric first -- my dark blue (or so I thought), followed by the one on the right, the purplish blue (medium) and the light blue (my light) on the left.  What I didn't realize was, the dark had too much of the light blue in it and with the pieces being so tiny, many times where it should be dark, the light blue square in my dark fabric was all you saw.  I'll know better next time.  Wish I had gone with red, green and white,  or red, white and blue.  The pattern would be more pleasing and distinctive and not as mushy. 

light ------------dark   ----------- medium
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this when I get all the blocks done, nor how on earth to quilt it.  Maybe I should just frame it and call it done then.  What would you do?

Hop on over to Judy's and see what's on other design walls.


6 comments:

  1. I was at Huston in 1999 and saw Jane Hall`s pineapple quilt in the show with a ribbon. I have always loved pineapple but not done a quilt yet. I think it is in my someday list. Yours is looking great.

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  2. Paper piecing can give such amazing results, though it does take a bit of mental adjustment. Your quilt would look great framed, though the quilting wouldn't show a bit of stitch in the ditch would hod it all together. I think your colors look great btw.

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  3. If you started that a decade ago, I sure hope you bought enough fabric! I really doubt the stores would have any left.
    I love it, of course you know me, I love paper piecing.
    I haven't sewn for days. We been on 2 road trips, gone for 8 days out of 10. Today it was canning. I really need to find the time to blog.
    Take care

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  4. I think it looks amazing, what a lot of piecing. If it were mine, and it got finished, I'd be tempted to machine quilt it in straight lines.

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  5. Wow, that's a lot of piecing with 45 tiny pieces in each block!

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  6. Your pineapples are beautiful Dar, and you definitely need to finish them! And quilt them too! Stitching in the ditch would take forever and make it pretty stiff since the logs are so small, but a nice flowing overall design would work well I think. I love the colors you chose :*)

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