Playing with Paper Piecing

I had a few days between my last big project (more about that later) and getting ready to move north for the summer so I dug into my scrap bags and played with this idea I had recently come across at this link.

Making my own pattern for the diamond shapes that create these wonky spider webs based on a Victorian motif was easy. Watching it grow on my design wall was fun ...

At this point, it began to be a bit more work to figure out which scraps to use where ...

 

Further along, I began to think about how in the world all these diamond shapes would be sewn together ... and could see no other way except with "Y" seams. So I finished up with a plan to use this as the center motif for a larger project.

Sewing the "Y" seams was not as bad as I had anticipated. The biggest trick for success is to not stitch into the seam allowances. Also, to backstitch at the beginning and end of each seam ... and each side of the diamond is a separate seam. In these two photos you can see the sequence of my getting those diamonds sewn together.

Here it is all stitched together ... front and back.

As you can see, I marked key diamonds on the paper clad backside so I wouldn't mess up the spider web patterns. The paper was torn away from the seam allowances so they could be pressed before I trimmed the whole piece to size and square it up in preparation for it to be used as the center motif in a future bed quilt.

Last evening I dug through my stash of fabric pieces that had been cut for other projects but had ended up not being used. Among my finds were a baggy full of red hued squares and the cut strips of the striped fabric. Both of those look good with the spider web piece. Ricky Tim's "dancing square" patterning is the perfect wonkiness for working those squares into a border. The same goes for that irregular striped fabric.

It's time to put all this away ... maybe I'll pack it up to finish designing and piecing sometime this summer.

Now to get busy so I can get back to creating in my Studio North.