Paper Piecing Class!

  Stay-at-Home-Momma (me) spent the whole afternoon today at part 1 (of 3 class sessions) attending a most wonderful paper piecing class at a LQS.  Jackie of Canton Village Quiltworks is our teacher, and we are doing a Judy Niemeyer pattern called Total Eclipse.  (I am showing you Jackie's version below, but you can see Judy Niemeyer's rendition from the cover of the pattern here).

Jackie opted to make her star points all different colors.
Since this is my first Judy Niemeyer pattern, I will be keeping it simple
and making my stars one color.

   It was so much fun to be amongst other quilters!!  There are nine of us in the class, and three of us have blogs (the others were new to me).  I was so busy taking in the information that I didn't get around to getting photos of everyone at work and all the wonderful fabrics they selected, but Jackie's post has lots of wonderful photos [including links to the other bloggers in the group].  I think that I am the only one who opted not to use batiks for this project.  

   I took photos as Jackie demonstrated the steps and techniques, so here is Maria's work-in-progress at the end of the day:

Maria also opted to make the star spikes all different colors.

Don't they look great?!

   I have to confess that I did not arrive at class fully prepared.  [I was the only one-- Oops.]  I received my fabrics (from Jackie's on-line shop) on Wednesday and both Thursday and Friday were busy and filled with commitments and appointments for myself and the kids.  I also underestimated the amount of time I needed to iron and pre-cut my fabrics and cut out the foundation papers.

   Actually, a number of us spent a fair amount of time cutting out the foundation papers (c. 10 pages), and then Jackie proceeded to show us a fast, quick method to cut them out all at once with a rotary cutter!

   Here's the method she showed us:

The class supply list called specifically for flower-head pins.
This is because they lie flat, and once you stack the foundation papers,
mark the corners and insert a few extra pins for stability,
you can simple place your 6"x24" ruler on top of them--
and it will lie flat.
And then you can rotary cut the whole lot at once!
Wish I'd have known!!

In this photo, Jackie is actually rotary cutting the template plastic,
but I forgot to pull out my camera when she was rotary cutting the
stack of foundation papers.

   Jackie also showed us how to quickly cut out our fabrics and template pieces for the stars. (Again, stack the pre-cut fabrics with the paper template page on top, and use a large-sized rotary cutter).

Placing paper clips so that one falls on each template piece,
and then slice the whole stack of fabric underneath.
Judy Niemeyer's patterns tell you the order in which to cut the lines.
Very clever (and time-saving!)

   Once we had our star pieces cut out,  Jackie demonstrated how to organize the fabrics so that we could chain-piece the quarter stars.  (Again, making it quicker/easier/more efficient).

For beginners/first-timers (like me), Jackie recommends marking pencil lines on the back side of the
foundation papers to make sure that your fabric is lined up correctly.

   It looked so easy when she showed the process, and then when I sat down at my machine, I was completely confused.  But I sat next to Sally, who was very helpful (as was Jackie)--Thank you, Sally, if you are reading this!--  and I [eventually] got it!!  Sally is one of the other bloggers in the class and you can visit her blog, Grendelskin here (Sally has already done some homework and completed a whole circle!)   Barbara's blog, A Corgi to Quilt by, is here.

   Let me present to you my very first star point(s)...  Ta da!

Here's the first one-- it looks so lonely.

Here's my first set at the end of 3 hours.
Not quite as impressive as Maria's set, above, but I have all week to catch up!!
(We'll see what excuses I come up with by next Saturday--
surely, I will not be ahead of the class).

   Stay tuned-- I will be working on this during the week, and we meet again next Saturday.  

   Have a good weekend!