State Fair Parade 5 - Paper Pieced Projects

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

These are two paper pieced projects that I made for class samples a couple years ago. Each of the four blocks are a paper pieced block with sashing and borders added. For quilting, they are both just stitched in the ditch.

I did the Valentine with embroidery in the white tone-on-tone blocks. They are quick and easy rework outline designs, but compliment the fabric very well.

The Valentine one has a neat little label on the back. It is an embroidered label, stitched on cutaway and then cut out and hand tacked to the back of the wall hanging.

This one also had a big oops! If you look closely, you can see the shadow of the red fabric underneath the white. Whenever you are sewing with white, you have to be careful that all your darker fabrics are trimmed down and not allowed to peek through. It is so easy to miss a few and the white fabric makes it very visible.

Here are the judge's comments:

A very nice piece. Shadowing on piecing. Sweet Valentine piecing.

My thoughts and comments:
I am going to be my own worst critic here, but the Valentine is not one of my best or favorite pieces. Yes, I like the embroidery designs and concept, but I have to say the little white dots swirling around the fabric just drives me nuts. Too me it is too busy and needs a calmer piece of fabric. But the purple one is fantastic! :)