Category: Blocks 1-10

There was finally some progress on my Nearly Insane blocks, thanks to the fact that I was without a sewing machine while visiting my son! I had printed out patterns for the first fifty blocks at home and had the sense to carry them with me along with the Summer Breeze III fabric by Moda that I am using for my quilt. With time on my hands, I sat for several hours and cut out the templates for foundation paper piecing ( hundreds of them!) before it struck me that I couldn’t use them without a sewing machine! Now what?

I could, of course cut out the fabric for the blocks. I had the pieces done for five random blocks, when it finally dawned on me that I could piece the blocks without the machine. English Paper piecing it was to be. But for that, the templates had to be cut again, into individual paper pieces. Not a happy thought, as the average number of pieces in each of the blocks must be around fifty.

It was certainly a tedious job, but I finally had the pieces ready for EPP.

Prepping the pieces for EPP

I started on this particular block, but gave up half way to do a really easy one–Block 2.

But before I show you Block 2, you must see my Block 1, completed on my sewing machine before I went to the US.

Block 1

Isn’t it pretty? I attempted some fussy cutting with this one.

Vital Stats
Paper foundation pieced
No of pieces: 37
No of templates for fpp: 5
Level of difficulty: Moderate (because of the tiny square in squares in the centre).
Completed in August 2018

Block 2

The white floral fabric isfrom a charm square I had lying around for years!

Vital Stats
English paper pieced
No of pieces: 21
Level of difficulty: Real easy–had I foundation paper pieced it!
Completed in November 2018

Block 3

This block was foundation paper pieced it came up quickly!

Vital Stats
Foundation paper pieced
No. of pieces: 37
No. of templates for fpp: 9
Level of difficulty: Easy
Completed in March 2019

Block 7

This block had 10 templates, so I would call it moderately difficult! The 3″ centre portion within the yellow strips had to be pieced in six steps (templates)!

Vital Stats
Foundation paper pieced
No of pieces: 36
No. of templates for FPP: 10
Level of difficulty: Moderately difficult
Completed in March 2019

Block 9

Here is another block I started while in the US.
The inner 4.5″ portion on this was English paper-pieced, it had 28 pieces!

But wait – the outer 1″ ring had 48 more pieces coming up. Terrifying! There were 16 half square triangles, 1″ each, besides four 4-patches of 1″!

I thought it would be sensible to wait to foundation paper piece them on a sewing machine. I finally sewed the 4 remaining templates of the block last week, when back in India. I discovered that I had made a mistake when drafting the pattern and I ended up hand-piecing it partly!

Vital Stats
English paper-pieced, foundation paper pieced and hand-pieced.
No of pieces: 76
No. of templates( had it been foundation paper-pieced): 14
Difficulty level: Difficult!
Completed in March 2019

Find out more about Salinda Rupp’s Quilt, popularly known as the Nearly and my version of it here! To see more blocks from my quilt, link on the `Nearly Insane’ link in the page menu.