A paper piecing kind of weekend

Previously I mentioned my intentions to use up all the scraps from my XOXO quilt. And they do need to be used up, considering the pile is 3" high. That's a lot of fabric cut into triangles! As the triangles aren't all beautifully and perfectly cut and actually are -scraps-... I decided traditional piecing would be a pain. Plus I might develop carpal tunnel trying to trim all these scraps to the same size.

So where did my mind go, quite logically? Paper piecing of course! Okay maybe not so logically. But I have been wanting to do a Circle of Geese block since way back when. And bonus! I discovered that my leftover triangles fit the geese sections perfectly! It's a quilty sign that this block was meant to be.

(Please excuse the bad photos - storm on its way and the light's not so good and I'm too impatient to wait til tomorrow to post this. Hello run on sentence). 

After I put this photo on the computer and tidied it up, I realised I hadn't squared the block. Oops! Bit untidy. Oh well! My whole life is a bit untidy so it's nothing out of the ordinary.

Even the white fabric in this is all scrap fabric. Please feel free to be impressed. I certainly am. Want to make your own Circle of Geese? Piece by Number has a free template- Woohoo! One day I want to make another one with the geese in white and the background fabrics all scrappy. I think that could be fun!

Talking about Piece by Number leads me to my next block! As I used another Piece by Number pattern for this one. The birdie blocks are called Birdie Bird and can be purchased through Etsy. Ridiculously cute pattern, right?

The birds on their own were only small (around 6") so i decided to pair them up with some paper pieced pinwheels. That pattern is designed by Kim from Block Central.

I have Juliet of Tartan Kiwi to thank for inspiring the next block! You really ought to check out her sampler quilt - it's looking fantastic! Anyways I saw this particular block of hers and just had to try it. It's called 'Snow Cristal' (it's okay spelling police - that's how it's spelt on the blog if you do a search for it )and is designed by Shape Moth.

I love how this looks - using the same fabric just in three different colours. One of the wedges is just slightly off but that's okay. I'm not going to let little imperfections kill my joy ;)

And last but not least (for now anyways, I'm so on a paper piecing kick right now!), I have this one I have renamed to Bright Star. Its technical name is Thuban and it was designed by Liz Schwartz and Stephen Seifert.  Not keen on that name so for the purpose of my block I'm going with my own name.  Btw have you seen equiltpatterns.com? How on earth have I not come across this site before?! I spent hours last night perusing patterns and bought a bunch of paper pieced patterns that were bargains at 99c a piece including this one! Woo!

This is by far the most complex paper piece pattern I have attempted. It has 20 sections. and that's reduced as the diamonds were meant to be pieced with two different fabrics. I am regretting my pink choice a little in this block, but the original pink I wanted to use... I didn't have enough! The horror! I guess that's the reality of working with scraps. Oh and yep one of my diamonds doesn't match perfectly. I buggered up the stitching and ended up cutting one a tiny bit smaller. Again with the imperfections - eh such is life right?

Right so have I bored you senseless yet? Or are you a teeny tiny bit curious about what I'm going to do with all these blocks? C'mon, you're curious, you know it.

Well all this hard work and effort (and I mean hours and hours of work) are going to be the back of a quilt. Insane I know. But I've decided to have a mini paper pieced sampler strip down the back of the XOXO quilt. Here's a refresher of the XOXO quilt (just because I love to show it off):

So with the top looking so pretty and glorious, the back really needs something special. Hence the paper piecing sampler :) Plus I just like paper piecing.

So... come across any fab paper piecing patterns lately? That might happen to ultilise scrappy triangles? Cos I'm keen for some more!

P.S. Nearly forgot to mention! Fiona from Finding Fifth  (my favourite blog buddy) and I are both approaching 50 followers on our blogs - exciting - thank you lovelies for reading our blogs! So we've decided to do a joint giveaway when we hit 50 - because any excuse for a giveaway will do! Would love for you to pop in for when that happens (hopefully not far away now!) or you know, become followers and get us that bit closer ;) .

Linking up to Sew Happy Geek's Manic Monday :)