Finished my first block, and I'm pretty happy with it! I have the Marti Michelle templates, but rather than marking the center point on each piece through the template, I'm just making a crease to mark center before I sew them. 3 pins (center and one at each end), plus liberal use of my awl to keep things lined up and feeding evenly seems to be working. I need to make my seams a tad more scant - I'm about 1/8" shy on my block size with this one.