I traced a pattern that I am going to attempt to paper piece. I've never done paper piecing before and now i'm looking at this very pretty pattern that I drew out but have no idea where to start. i got the pattern from a block book. The pic below is the pattern. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[IMG]http://i1233.photobucket.com/albums/...T/26714b09.jpg[/IMG]

OMG! I wouldn't know where to start! If it were paper pieced, there should have been numbers to start with

That's the problem, it wasn't a paper pieced pattern. I'm trying to make it one. I thought it would be easier to do it this way than trying to make sure all the diamonds line up as i'm sewing...

just remember that your fabric needs to be 1/4 inch over each line and your working your fabric upside down I'm not sure where I would start but i'm thinking the inside 1/2 square off the small diamonds then work your way out to the edges and have that 1/4 over on them. i could be wrong though just a thought, good luck, I have pp with projects from carol doak I believe she has a tute on doing your own designs on her website. caroldoak.com
Sandra

I think you will need to break it down into subunits and then sew those units together.

you are going need to EQ to get that done in PPing...you need to break it down more to avoid those y-seams for sure...

There was a thread on here about this at this link:
http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-20809-1.htm

also check Carol Doak's site - she has directions for how to convert a regular pattern to paper piecing here:

http://www.caroldoak.com/free-quilt-patterns.php

What is EQ?

Here is a tip I found the other day. Maybe it will help.
http://www.paperpanache.com/howto/butterfly.htm
Hope it works.

the way this pattern is, even when broken down into sub units, will have Y seams.

if you can do Y seams then you won't have a problem but you would have to add more lines in order to avoid any Y seams.

Also check out the how-to's at top of page. Lots of info.

Electric quilt, a software program to design in!

Electric Quit. It's a computer program for designing blocks and quilts. Very helpful for any quilter. It was on my Christmas wish but I guess I wasn't a very good girl. Maybe next year.

Thank you everyone for the links and comments! I looked at the Carol Doak page and she said that some patterns are not meant to be paper pieced... I think this is one of them. I didn't realize how many Y seams there were- which would be very difficult to paper piece as far as i can tell. I think i'm just going to do it the way the book says to. :) I'll post up a pic if I can ever get this figured out! HAHAHA... (did i mention that i've decided to make this quilt for a benefit silent auction and it needs to be done April 10th! oh and that this is only my 4th quilt!... I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed) :shock:

hey,, try this...looks like the one you want to make....

http://www.quilterscache.com/V/VOS_ChrissStarBlock.html

there is also this one...
http://www.quilterscache.com/V/VOS_S...StarBlock.html

If you change the "V", think cleavage, in your stars, it really wouldn't be very hard to rotary cut & piece half square triangles like the examples given on Quilter's Cache. If you want to paper piece it though, you'll definitely want to change the Y seams. Most, if not all, are in your background so if you use a solid or near solid background--it will still look like your design when finished.

Break the block into quarters and just work on one quarter at a time. A rough draft of what I came up with is below:

not too bad...tiny bits, but would be cool..

Here's a free quilting program : QuiltAssistant . It will do the numbering for you . Help files will tell you how to. You can desing PP as well as regular blocks, turn photos into quilt blocks etc. It prints but does not calculate yardage. It's FREE and worth checking out:
http://www.cosman.nl/software_en.html

OMG!! Thank you so much!!! BKrenning- thank you for taking the time to trace over that picture with the numbers. I'm going to make 2 blocks- one pp and one not and see which one I like better. I'll post up some pics soon! Thank you again everyone!

BTW - welcome to the Quilt Board! As you have already figured out, this is a great place to be - so glad you got the help you needed - these ladies/gents are wonderful on here. I'm a transplanted Minnesotan - how much snow is still on the ground up there?

No problem. Paper-piecing is how I learned to quilt and I loved designing my own patterns.

You should start with the small star, and erstan947 is right, you need to break it into sections.

Thanks Mary! i'm so glad I found you all! and there's not much left now. the roads are clear finally! we got about 6 inches last week but its mostly gone now. now we just get to deal with the mud!