Paper Piecing Party On the Road: Setting Up Your Paper Piecing Workspace

First things first, a massive thank you to the beautiful Kristy for letting me hijack her Paper Piecing Party for the week! And if you're visiting from Quiet Play, thanks for stopping by! Feel free to take a look around.

Kristy is one of my quilting besties, we're in the Wombat Stew paper piecing bee together, and we are real life quilting group friends too (yes, I know I'm lucky!). She's been to my house and knows how fussy I can be about my creative space, so when I asked if she was interested in sharing my paper piecing set up with her readers, she probably figured I'd have a very particular way of doing things... and I do!

I rarely paper piece away from home because I really am fastidious about how my paper piecing workspace is set up. I'm going to share my set up and process with you - maybe you'll get something out of it, and if you've never been super comfortable with paper piecing, this might help you set up your own space.

I consider paper piecing quite different to traditional piecing in terms of set up. When I'm traditional piecing I'll do a heap of cutting first, then sew, then press in a batch later on. Having everything close at hand isn't as critical.

But when I'm paper piecing I find myself cutting fabric, stitching, trimming and pressing with every seam.  (And yes, I know it's not mandatory to press with every single seam, but I like to. Fussy, is what your call it.) Cast your mind back to high school home ec, did you learn about the kitchen work triangle of stove-sink-fridge? Well, your paper piecing work triangle is pressing station, cutting station and sewing machine. I'm a creature of comfort, once I sit at my machine I don't want to move, so I have everything at hand.

Before I start, I gather my sewing materials. A small bin for teeny scraps, small rulers, a larger ruler for cutting down large pieces, a medium sized pair of sewing scissors, an unpicker (keeping it real!) and my regular and small rotary cutters. My baby rotary cutter is the one I bought when I first started quilting, sometimes it's easier to use than the regular 45mm one when you're making small cuts.

And from the regular stationery section, a pair of paper scissors to cut my paper pattern pieces, a pencil to write what colour fabric goes on each pattern section (I ALWAYS do this) and a white glue stick to stick that first piece in place.

My pressing station is to the left of my machine (I am left handed, so you might prefer to have yours to the right). I covered small TV table with batting and calico and it makes the perfect pressing station. Credit for this idea goes to Elizabeth at Oh, Fransson!.

You can see how it sits right by my cutting table and I just have to spin my chair to press.

My cutting mat is to the left of my sewing machine so I can simply cut my fabrics and trim them up without moving.

Keeping it real moment... just in case you thought super fussy equates with neat, it doesn't!! Right now I'm piecing my Harry Potter quilt and it requires a huge variety of fabrics. All of which are right here on the cutting mat!!

My OTT Lite sits right behind me shining light on the machine. It's perfect for making sure your seam allowance is okay before you stitch. It is also near impossible to take a photo of this, but you get the idea!

I like to have my extension table on my machine for paper piecing. I figure that a larger flat surface to place your pieces on is better.

 And this is my Wombat Stew block for Ms Midge, who is our April queen. Midge has decided on a London theme for her blocks and Kristy has designed us a gorgeous collection.

Thanks for taking a little tour of my paper piecing space - now it's your turn to link up and share all your beautiful paper piecing goodness with me!

Quick refresher on what the deal is with the Paper Piecing Party (full details here):
* It’s on every weekend here at Quiet Play, starting Friday.
* Link up something you’re working on that’s foundation paper pieced
* Link a blog post or flickr photo
* Visit at least two other links and leave a comment because that’s half the fun!

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Sunday Stash - And She's Back

Oh my, what a long, unintentional, hard to get back in the game blogging break it's been! Oops!

No real excuses, aside from life got the better of me. It's been a crazy busy year and I decided to step back from blogging and even reading many blogs, but that messed with my productivity (though it did make me less likely to buy fabric). But I really need to get back into the swing of quilting and actually finishing stuff, so I'm jumping back into the blogging thing.

What better way to dip my toes back in the water than with a bit of fabric shopping? I'm linking this up with Finding Fifth's Sunday Stash, which is being hosted by Michelle of Squeak Crafts.

Spotlight had 40% off all quilting and dressmaking fabrics this weekend, so I headed up to get some solids for a new project. Turns out that solids weren't included, but fortunately I found a coupon for 25% off solids with their patchwork magazine.

I added a few little pieces to my stash....

Some solids and a few coordinating prints for something skill-pushing I've got planned.

Some low volumes because apparently you can't have enough of those babies.

Some stash builders, because apparently my stash isn't big enough already.

And this little pretty, which is just because it's so pretty and in my favourite colour and embroidery hoops and that's enough reason.

I also bought about 8 metres of light grey homespun, to add to my bolt collection. Really feel like a quilter when there are bolts on the top of the shelves.

And some seriously cute metallic dotty fabric that is super darn cute for skirts for my girls - can't show you that fabric because I've already sewn them into skirts... MIRACLES WILL NEVER CEASE!

Oh, and another couple of bits for my Wombat Stew Secret Santa swap, but I can't show you those either because they are hopefully so just right for my recipient that she'd guess if she saw them. Hopefully.

And that, my friends, is my stash building for this week. Hope your week is full of fabricy goodness too!

Jane

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Friday Finish - Secret Santa

I actually finished this project last week, but it was in transit interstate to my lovely fellow Wombat, Lara, so I couldn't show it off it until now.

As regular readers know, I'm in a paper piecing bee called Wombat Stew. In December, we opted to make secret Santa presents instead of swapping blocks, and I was allocated Lara.

A few of Lara's favourite quilty thing include selvedges, rainbows and hexagons - we are total kindred spirits in that department. So after a quick stalk of her Pinterest, I came up with a plan for a small wall quilt.

 Some block detail:

And a rainbow stripe back:

I had so much fun making this, picking out my favourite prints, playing with my selvedges, doing my favourite type of quilting, testing my new perle cottons.... it was all fun and games up to the binding, which gave me grief due to the cranky sewing machine phenomenon, but it got done.

I am so happy with how it turned out, there were a few moments when I wanted to keep it for myself. But I know it's gone to a very good home and is most loved - it is always more special when handmade gifts are well received.

In addition to one handmade item, we put in little bits and pieces too.

I broke out my Silhouette cutter to make her this sign and a paper tea set - no idea what she might be able to do with that, but Lara loves teapots and red, so it fits :).

I also sent along a set of quilt row markers I've made, I found this idea on Pinterest a while ago and they're a great alternative to scribbling on tape or scraps of paper to mark your rows.

And some Japanese character tape, another thing Lara likes.

I also sent a little roll of scraps, but this is kind of cheating, because they were Lara's scraps for her bee block - Lara is in both my bees and was queen in December and January, so I popped both her bee blocks in the parcel too.

I wrapped everything up individually because opening it is part of the fun.

And when I took it to the post office, there was my Secret Santa present from the lovely Gemma waiting for me! It would appear my photos of this are on my phone, so I'm stealing a pic from Gemma's post here.

Oh my God, when I opened my parcel I was totally smitten. How amazing is this?



You may have already seem this cushion, floating around the interwebs on places like Aurifil's Facebook and Twitter feeds!!! - and it is totally worthy of the attention. The fabric selection and piecing is beautiful and the quilting is sublime. It is just so beautiful and I am so very in love.

The only problem is that it makes the rest of my couch cushions look very shabby indeed... so I need to get on the task of making more cushions.

Linking up to TGIFF  at From Blank Pages, and Crazy Mom Quilts.

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Lucky Little Wombat

I'm in a little paper-piecing bee called Wombat Stew - which is a bit of a nod to the famous Ringo Pie, and a bit of a nod to us all being Australian. Wombating along with me are Alyce, Fiona, Gemma, Kristy, Lara and Marieka. - and they are all such talented paper piecers!

I have been very slack in sharing these pictures, but back in October I was the Queen Wombat. I requested house blocks, with my only stipulation being that they featured the street number 34, because that's my street number and I also wanted a bit of selvedge love in them.

 I got all my blocks in the mail over the course of a few weeks, and eventually they were all together, and looking wonderful. They're all a little different, but they all happen to feature that clear blue sub-tropical sky we have here. I adore them!I am a lucky, lucky girl. Actually, scratch that - I think my 8 year old is a lucky girl, because this quilt is probably destined to go to her. Between Fiona using purple as her main colour and Lara putting Blythe dolls in the window - two of Brooke's most favouritest things in the world - it seems like a sign that this should be her quilt.

Take a look at this paper pieced love!

Alyce's Little Red house

Fiona's purple Nanny Goat house

Lara's doll house

Kristy's Quilter Lives Here house

Marieka's actual house - Kristy designed this block based on a picture of the 100 year old bluestone cottage Marieka recently bought!

Gemma's traditional Noumean house

I really think that one of the key things with paper piecing is your fabric selection. The thing that really makes all of these blocks pop is the choices of fabric. And I think we're all finding that the fabrics we choose for paper piecing are often different to what we'd use for regular piecing. We're looking for a lot more textured look, small scale, natural looking prints that can pass as wood or bricks or leaves, or cute designs that can be fussy cut.

The girls also included some scraps for me, which I shared on Sunday, but I'll share again 'cos they're so freaking cute. My girls have the BEST taste in fabric!

I'm not quite sure how to finish this up - I think I'll add 3 more houses and then put a picket fence border around it all. I'm not in a huge rush though, I am loving having these babies up on the design wall for a while.

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