The Tattoo Quilt, first block—

 —the Love Heart block!

February was the month of love and even though Valentine’s Day has passed, I decided to start with this as my first block in the pattern...in February…but first:

I like to read patterns.  I like to pore over them and note anything unusual and since I’ve mentioned the like-hate relationship with paper piecing, I look for tips and suggestions to make it easier for my brain to process the piecing of the units.

I opened the PDF of the pattern to read, and as I was going through I started thinking that these were really tiny blocks!  I finally figured out that what I thought was the actual size of the block was a piecing diagram.  Phew.  

So, around 2:30 pm on a Monday off from work, I told the hubs I had to start this thing.  A couple of weeks ago I prewashed all of my fabrics and had them neatly stacked up on my cutting table. 

I started fishing out the fabrics for one block—another decision I made was to not try to speed through this one.  Instead of printing everything (the pattern for the blocks is 107 pages), I just decided to print one block for right now and let’s see where this takes us.

Three hours later, this was how far I got:

  

And I’m not complaining, but I work in two rooms that are not adjoining and move back and forth taking care of business; that’s a good thing—I move.  Sew in one room; cut in the other.

A glimpse into my like-hate of foundation paper piecing:  Twenty+ years ago I drafted a paper-pieced quilt in Electric Quilt (version 4!) for our son, Ross.  A year prior to his graduation from high school I printed all the blocks on copy paper, cut apart the sections, cut out every fabric piece adding a 1/2” seam allowance for good measure (HAH!), and started piecing.  I finished it 11 years later.

In other words, I’m going to enjoy this process.  In the course of three hours I determined one way to speed things up was to freehand trim the seam allowances instead of moving to the other room to trim them with the Add-a-Quarter ruler (and these pieces are so small I really should only add an 1/8”; just sayin’).  

And on the Saturday after that Monday, I cut the remaining pieces (or so I thought) for the block, and got this far in piecing and time flew by, but I’m guessing I spent 2.5 hours to get to here:

I only used the seam ripper once during this session.  My brain is getting better at understanding the mirroring process and correctly angling the fabric pieces.  

The next day, I spent 3 hours piecing the remaining sections of the block, trimming the sections and pieced Section A to Section B.  I used the seam ripper twice. 

Then it was time to snuggle with these Puptarts:

More about these babies in an upcoming post!

...and make dinner. ☹️

So, first tip I will share: if you have to use your seam ripper, rip from the fabric side, not the paper side. 

Also, I cannot believe how tiny some of these pieces are.  My mind started going down the “Maybe I should have appliquéd this…”. Nope! It’s a journey and an adventure; I’m soldiering on.

Those letter blocks back there?  The largest section is 4” x 5”.  There are two micro-tiny triangles in this block that finish at 3/8”. 

The one with the 3/8" triangle (actually, there are 3 of them in this block)

Since I’m sharing the process, here’s my setup: I’m stitching on my Bernina 770 upgraded to a Plus and using stitch #1326 with a length of 1.8 mm.  I have reduced my foot pressure to 45, and I’m using my 34D foot.  

If you can only paper piece on regular copy or printer paper, you will want to shorten your stitch length more.  Test it on scraps and keep shortening it until the paper starts to peel off as you stitch; you don’t want that to happen.  I am printing my blocks on a lighter weight newsprint I purchased at Amazon for $7 and that’s why I can use the 1.8 mm stitch length; any shorter than that on this paper and I’ll run into trouble.  I’m using Superior So Fine polyester thread in Snow, #401. It’s an off-white and it behaves nicely. So Fine is available in 30, 50 and 60 wt; I’m using 50 because it’s what I have, but I may try the 60 wt.

And I keep thinking of all of that Alison Glass fabric I have waiting for the second tattoo quilt.  Cindy asked me the other day if I was going to make that one, and I told her I may hand applique it. 

And since this past Monday, I have an almost finished block!  I'm pretty happy with it; it still needs the background borders added to it.  It looks wonky because the last pieced section was just ironed and wanted to pop forward. I think I have spent at least 10 hours on this block, but that also includes the fabric choices and cutting: 

And the other thought running through my head is the deadline.  In my intro post I talked about wanting this done by November—and done meaning pieced, quilted, labeled and bound.  I thought I could make a block in an afternoon!  Now I’m thinking about taking a week off from work to make some major headway.  I’m trying to limit my use of annual leave since I’m retiring at the end of the year, when I will be on permanent vacation.

I’ll have more thoughts and explanations to share with you for the length of time it takes me to work on each block.  Some of them are about how my brain works, others are about interruptions and distractions (not all bad!). 

In the meantime, go make!