Adventures in Paper Piecing – first class!

 Mariners Compass Quilt Class!

  Have you ever seen a quilt that was so beautiful that you just had to try and make one?  Well, that’s what happened to me! I’ve never paper pieced before but I couldn’t help myself and signed up for the class.
Here’s the quilt and the quilt maker/teacher Mary Warden:

I convinced my sister-in-law (SIL) Barb to take this 3 part class with me.  We didn’t know how to paper piece, so Mary said she would try teaching us using a easy pattern. She brought the pattern and the fabrics, which for Barb and me was a blessing! 
After 3 hours and lots of patient instuctions we finished our sample block:

 Ok that was fun and we decided to take the Mariners Compass class!

The hardest part of the quilting process for me is picking out what fabrics to use.  So I enlisted the help of my quilting friends Sue and Kitty and found the perfect fabrics: 

Off to the class – I thought we were going to start with the smaller block and took the fabrics for it.  Wrong – we started on the largest block and had to make the fabrics work.

The class was fun!! This first block was easy and fast (it took 3 hours to make!)

It was so much fun that I thought I would make a 2nd block using my first choice of fabrics  and that’s where the “Adventure Begins”
Here it is in four sections -

I had 4 templates from the 1st block and had to make 12 more -
and these were a different size!

Things I learned so far:

1. Bring all your fabrics to the class!

2. Make extra paper template sheets -
  coping all at the same time.

3.  Have the tools needed for the class -
ex: special ruler, plastic template and good
seam ripper!

4. Measure everything 6 times
and plan on a few learning mistakes 

5. When starting a new block -
make all new paper templates!
I found when I made more sheets later
the printer mysteriously changed the size of my template!

 

Next the small blocks – more blogging to follow later…………..