Karen Stone's pattern "Cinco de Mayo"- I don't know the tricks to sewing curves.

My sister-in-law found a quilt she likes on Pinterest, it is purses, shoes, hats etc girly. She is hard to please so I want to do this for her. Big Challenge, no pattern, did find applique patterns for the shoes & hats, thanks to as great quilt board member! I did find a purse block, paper pieced, but it is not quite right. So now I am in the process of trying to figure out the patch on my own. If it doesn't work, I will go the paper pieced route. We shall see! It's all an adventure!

Learning to run my mom's long arm machine. She is not able to run the machine due to health issues and I will be taking over her quilting business. I am a hand quilter so machine quilting is different for me.

I have been attempting Marci Baker's "Not your Grandmother's Tumbling Blocks" for my son. He chose the pattern last year and I work on it from time to time... it is tedious but I hope to finish by the time he graduates college in May. ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWpSE...OWSToQ&index=1

I think her quilts are beautiful. I do wish you luck, but what a journey it will be. I love making items that challenges me. I want to learn a different method every time I tackle a quilting item. Show it to us, when you get done.

Have you seen the tutorial on quiltville. http://quiltville.com/spiderwebpf.html You can adapt this, not use strips but solids on both sides of the center part. It took me a couple tries to make the right size.

I started Judy Niemeyer's Sea Urchins without the papers. A quilt shop owner told me I couldn't make this pattern without using the paper pattern. This became my challenge to prove her wrong. I learned to paper piece without sewing through the papers. If you want to learn paperless paper piecing, check out Judy Mathieson's Mariner's Compass Quilts: Setting a New Course. There are some patterns that will require you to use papers but if you hate tearing out all those paper pieces and love paper piecing, check out Judy's Mathieson's book.

I'm doing BOMs and some months are challenging. My July block I just finished and it was pieced and the outside was pp. The inside was suppose to be 8 1/2" but mine ended up being 9" so the paper piecing wouldn't fit. I ripped it apart and started over and got it down to 8 3/4". I made the paper piecing larger than called for and put it all together and it's suppose to be 12 1/2" and mine was 12". How can that be??? It's crazy! So I put a border around it and called it good. I hate ripping.

I'm about to start my latest challenge to myself, a double wedding ring quilt. I've never paper pieced before and the pattern for it that I'm using expects me to do that. It looks like it should be fairly straightforward - place the center slice, see on the ones on either side, repeat, continue till arc finished. Trying to decide what paper to print the 98 arcs on.

Seems like everything is a challenge, lately. Queen-size to hand quilt, mountain of ufo's, organizing, and yard!!