Hang in there.

I feel your pain, I am a new quilter and I just cut out pieces for a simple table runner and even though I measured the blocks before I cut them, some were still off.

I was using an acylic rotery cutter template and tracing around it with a pen, the cutting it out with scissors..so not sure what went wrong..

If any of you ladies have any suggestions I would love to hear them..

Thanks so much Jenn

Starch/sizing helped me - and pressing and getting that fabric stiff!! but I am totally intimidated by paper piecing !! each one of us is different !

I made two baby quilts using the Missouri Star method for HST's and will never do that method again. It was a nightmare trying to put these quilts together. Plus, the white fabric I used was not 100% cotton, it was a cotton-polyester blend and that created another nightmare.

Make sure you have a 1/4" foot. I had to rip a lot of seams out finding out this tid bit (mine was a bit bigger, those little bits add up) now I have a 1/4 foot. ;-)

She is right if you like to paper piece try Thangles. Do a google search for quiltingandwhatnot for a free version of printable HST. I also like to cut my squares bigger and trim them down to the right size, ie if the pattern says cut two squares 3 7/8 I will cut the squares 4 inches. It will get easier :-)

I hated piecing until I just realized that it was the cutting messing me up. So I saved and bought an AccuQuilt. Now I mostly only sew it if I have the necessary dies to cut it. So much less frustrating (for me at least).

Everyone, thank you so much for all the encouragement and suggestions. I am investigating each suggestion and feel confident that one will be the ticket for me. I'm going to use the HSTs that I have cut for rug mugs and potholders as I don't want to try to piece the quilt with them. I'll wait until I have a more reliable method for making HSTs to do the quilt. Thanks again for all your help!