WIP - Global Bee blocks update

Our Queen Bee for January, Anna from Quilting Along The Grain, picked this paper pieced pattern called Kaleidoscope.  You can download the pattern free from Red Pepper Quilts Craftsy Shop if you would like to make some.  Anna wanted 2 of these teeny 4.5" blocks from us in the Global Scrap Bee and it being paper pieced I thought easy, I'll make her a few more!

I'd forgotten how much of an up and down success ride I have with paper piecing.  I made some paper pieced Doctor Who blocks and got lots of practice, designed the ears for Robot bear no problem and 24 fussy cut square in a squares later I thought easy peasy, I've got this down!  Well last night, while watching Benedict Cumberbatch in Parades End, I struggled to get a matching seam on the two halves of the block.

The seams coming together can be quite bulky and my machine just said nope, not doing that.  I came to the  middle section and it stuck in place, needle going up and down and nothing feeding through.  Of course I had stitch length set to 1.5 for the paper piecing bit and forgot to change so ripping out was a pain!  This was attempt number 1 (I eventually binned this one it hurt my eyes so much!)



Attempt #2 went better, still a bit off but at least no refusal at the jump!  In the end by the time Benedict's character had made his mind up to leave his wife, I had 2 decent looking blocks!

Maybe I was distracted by the love story or maybe practice makes perfect but 2 done at least for Anna to fulfill the brief.

Of course I tried again and things went much better.  The answer was in the pinning!


 To join the two pieces together I placed a pin in the join between the blue and white triangles to find the spot to pin from the back.

I moved the pin to the back spot as below and instead of turning the pin back into the fabric I placed a pin on either side of this one.

The trick was to keep this straight and when I did the pieces nested in better, my machine liked it better and I got really pretty points.  Pinning any other way gave me pieces that moved the seams on top of each other and my Husqvarna Viking didn't like it!

So now I have 4 blocks! Don't they make a lovely repeating pattern?  This is going to be one really lovely quilt.

I'm thinking these would look great as a cushion with 4 rows and 4 columns too!

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