Double Trouble: Two Finishes for the Price of One!

Howdy y'all! Hope this weekend is treating you well! Today, I have not one, but TWO finishes to share with you. I finished binding these two minis last night and despite the forecast for rain, the sun stayed out for me to get them photographed. :)

Double the minis, double the fun!

These two minis are my first two tries at paper piecing and what fun I've had! I love having a new skill in my quilting tool belt, it opens up so many more doors. I definitely got acquainted with my seam ripper, but I never felt overwhelmed figuring these out.

All I can think about is bumblebees when I look at this. Lol.

The first one is the pattern from SloStudio that I shared with y'all last week. I ended up quilting around the edges of the black areas with black thread - I didn't want to distract from the piecing I worked so hard on!

And it was fate to have that black binding because I found a leftover piece of black binding from something I sewed for my Mom. It looks sharp and frames it so well!

Why hello there, Little Mermaid!

Next is my pride and joy. I found the pattern for The Warsaw Mermaid on Craftsy a while back and saved it despite it being a paper piecing pattern. Some day is what I thought as I filed it away. Well some day ended up being this week! As I was going through my fabric, I noticed that I had the perfect colors for a Little Mermaid and I remembered this pattern.

"NOW! RIGHT NOW!"

I absolutely adore her hair!

So I scrambled to print the pattern and get started. On this one, I took a note out of Jenn @ A Quarter Inch From the Edge's book and colored the pattern pieces according to what fabric went where. It was such an easy thing to do, but such a lifesaver!

This one sat and marinated for a little as I tried to figure out what to bind it with. Nothing fit. I was afraid of ruining my hard work with a crappy binding job. Then, yesterday evening, it hit me - I didn't need a binding! I found this tutorial by Red Pepper Quilts and finished it via the birthing method. It's not quite as neat as I wanted, but for a first try, I'm happy with it. :)

A happy little pair to add to the wall of minis!

I already have plans to make some more mermaids (there are a couple of little girls in my family that LOVE Ariel), so I'm sure you'll be seeing more of them before Christmas time!

I was playing with my camera and LBC was cooperative for once! :)

Learning Something New!

Howdy y'all! I'm so excited to share what I've learned this past week!

You guessed it!

PAPER PIECING!!

That's right, I learned paper piecing and, even more shocking, I didn't hate it! I was actually a bit scared to try it out. I've read so many horror stories of how confusing and stressful it is and how people spend more time with their seam ripper than anything else. The funny thing is, none of those things happened. I barely had to use my seam ripper! I thought ahead and used solids so there wasn't a 'wrong side' of the fabric to fool with as I learned my basics.

Such pretty little points, makes my heart sing...

I used a free pattern from a blogger I follow, SLOstudio. She has some paper piecing patterns for free on her Craftsy page, you should check them out! I chose this one because it didn't seem too scary but was still interesting. I looked up a couple of videos on Youtube and decided to just dig in and give it a whirl.

Hello world!

And before I knew it, I had a finished block! I celebrated and continued on each evening until I had 4 blocks ready to be sewn together. They aren't perfect by any means, but I couldn't be happier with my first attempt at paper piecing.

I plan to get this one quilted soon, but I have no idea what to do with the quilting. Any suggestions?

I told LBC he needed a picture for the blog so he showed me his good side! :)

Thanks for reading, Happy Hump Day, y'all!