Originally Posted by mac
Absolutely impressive! Being that they are such small blocks any distortions can really show up. Your blocks are all perfect.
Here's a few questions:
Do you use a lot of starch on your fabric? They all look so crisp.
Are any of these paper-pieced? I didn't quite understand the part where you said you cut the pieces bigger.
Where did you get the patterns for the blocks and the bears?
Any other secrets you can give us?
Thank you for sharing your wonderful work.
mac
P.S. Congratulations on being a grandma!
I starched before, during and after........you have to be able to flip over after sewing with your fingernail. All besides the tumbling blocks and the fish are paper pieced.
What helped me alot was to keep scissors to me right thumb all the time. It drives you crazy to have to pick it up and lay it down every few seconds otherwise.
There is more advantage to that since you have to stop pp after an hour to get the blood circulation back to your thumb.........just be carefull if you put your glasses up your nose with the same hand!?
I started quite a few patterns I had to give up at this scale. I think littler than 1" square is not managable as you have to piece them together somehow. As I mentioned before it took sometimes up to 10 attempts until it was perfect,per seam.
12 seams with 9 patches and 24 with 16 patches is much more workmanship than art.
Most of the patterns I got from this board or quilterscache and the embroidery files for the bears are from allstitches.com