Family Affair (TSS 015)

UNCLE! Me and my seam ripper give up! This is the latest block in The Splended Sampler quilt along. 

The fifteenth block in the series - this was the first to use paper piecing. Now, I love paper

piecing; there's a lot of fabulously intricate things you can do with it. However, this one had a slight twist. The dotted X in the middle? It involves fabric strips connecting two paper pieced sections. There are alot of quilters having difficulties with this, but, done right, there are some spectacular blocks!

I had problems with the first time I tried to connect two of my sections to the strip. It came out 1/8" short in each direction. With a pattern like this, it adds up. I realized when I sewed the strip, I had fed the fabric on top of the paper pieced section; when I pinned it to the bottom (image below), they came out perfectly at 3 1/2". 

Sewing four sections together equaled a pretty 6 1/2" square. I'm really loving the greens and blues in these blocks. Now time to add in a dash of red to keep it interesting.

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That's a lot of pieces!

I've decided to keep a counter at the bottom of these posts to track them. 

The totals are based on the original patterns and not on deviations.

Family Affair = 36

Total to Date: 279 pieces*

*The count only includes the blocks I've completed to date