A whimsy - paper piecing a pincushion

Last week I joined the Perth Modern Quilting Guild.  I attended my first meeting and what a lovely group of ladies.  I was made to feel very welcome and loved having a bunch of like minded people to discuss everything quilty with.  (My lovely bloke and kids try hard...but about 5 minutes is all they can take!)

One of the things of offer was a lesson in paper piecing by the very talented Serena of Sew Giving. I've wanted to try paper piecing ever since I bought 'Patchwork Please' by Ayumi Takahashi inspired by Lindy's work here, but I couldn't understand the instructions so this lesson was exactly what I needed.

In the class, Serena showed us how to make a simple butterfly

Over the long weekend we have this weekend, to celebrate Australia Day, I wanted to practise my new skills before they fell out of my brain!

So, perhaps a little ambitiously, I decided on the pincushion.  It was too good an opportunity to use some wee pieces of some of my favorite fabrics!

All went well until in my enthusiasm I overlooked that when trimming up the blocks I needed to add a 1/4 inch seam allowance!  Oops!

Just as well I had more of both fabrics I had featured!  The blue rose is from a dress my mother made me for my 10th birthday.  It was full length and I felt like a Princess!  Although I only wore it once that I can recall I couldn't bear to part with it, so it is slowly being recycled into a number of quilting projects!

After I'd repaired my mistake the rest of the project went together smoothly, although I was very grateful for the lesson I'd had.

I love this small strip of Liberty on one side, and I used a selvedge I have been hoarding for ages on one of the other sides from designer Anna Griffin......it took a bit of nifty work to catch just the edge of the selvedge in the seam!

All in all I am very pleased with my efforts - looks just like the one in the picture!  Finished off with a beautiful vintage button.

I'm torn between trying the envelopes of the books covers next!

Linking up with Sew the Library at Fabric Mutt.