Thank you all for your kind words. I appreciate it!
I know many of you love the piecing part but honestly, the quilting part is my favorite part! Unfortunately, by the time I get there, I'm usually so tired of working on the project that all my grand plans to execute a great design are usually stifled by the pressure to finish. I made myself double down and work extra hard to finish this one in time and I'm glad I did!
Originally Posted by
copycat
Any advice on what kind of paper you used to paper piece?
I used 8.5 x 11in newsprint. You can buy this by the ream and it generally runs through my Brother laser printer just fine if I don't try to do too many sheets, it's the only paper in the tray, and I set the software setting to something like "recycled paper" instead of regular copy paper so it feeds a little better. Once in awhile it gets jammed but it wasn't too terrible. When I bought it a few years ago, I was able to get it for about $4 per ream but it seems to be a little more expensive now. Still cheaper than the foundation paper piecing paper they market to quilters Here's a link to what I have:
Newsprint on Amazon
A couple things I learned about this pattern: the centers of the blocks are quite bulky. Pressing open was definitely the way to go when joining blocks and it was still kind of a hard lump so I avoided quilting directly over those joins. Some of the other joins were also still kind of bulky so just be careful if you're quilting directly over them.
I mark with Crayola Ultra Clean Washable Markers and every mark washed out perfectly. I traced the clef designs because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep them consistent without marking them but I only marked reference dots for all the dot to dot quilting. I didn't mark the words and perhaps I should have because my spacing wasn't always awesome.