Dots on Dots Blog Hop and Tutorial

Hi everyone, I am participating in the "Dots on Dots Blog Hop", sponsored by Quilt Taffy.  

The challenge was to make a 12" block, but you had to use one or more polka dot fabrics. 

I went to my fabric stash and learned something about myself, I love polka dots!!!

 I wanted to try something new, so I went to Pinterest and looked at my Quilt Blocks board.

I really liked the Rocky Road to Kansas quilt block.

It is paper pieced, and I have never tried that technique before.

There was a great tutorial by Fresh Lemon Quilts.

Here is the photo tutorial of my block.

I printed the template from Fresh Lemon Quilts, very easy!

I wanted a scrappy star, so I cut all my polka dots strips to sew together.

I arranged the polka dot fabrics strips in the order I liked them best.

Then I sewed each stack together.

You set your stitch length to a low number so that the stitches are really small, and the paper will rip away from the stitches really easily.  You just sew along the line on the pattern.

This is what it looks like on the back.

The yellow fabric is pressed back, all while keeping the paper pattern intact.

The paper pattern is meant to put on a light box so that you can place the fabric with a l/4" seam allowance.

You sew the fabric pieces on in order, starting with attaching 2 to 1 and 3 to 1, and so on.

This is sewing piece number 3 to piece number 1, while watching the tutorial on my ipad.

After the piece is sewn on, you trim the seam allowance to l/4".

Finally, piece number 4 is sewn onto piece number 1.

All the pieces are sewn together and pressed, now it is time to trim.

Trimming is so easy, you just cut along the outside lines.

It is so easy!  The inner line is the sewing line.

My square is complete, just need to make 3 more.  For each square, you will need a paper pattern.

Since the square is complete, it is time to rip off the paper pattern.

I am thrilled, my square looks perfect!

Here is my unfinished 12 l/2" square.  

Paper piecing was fun, I am going to make some more projects using this method!

I added a l l/2" border to my square.

I tried "pebble" quilting, and it looks like polka dots!

Since this block was so little, it was perfect to try a new quilting design.

A scrappy Road to Kansas Star looks great with a scrappy binding.

It's all finished, do you like it?  It is a 14" decoration for my tabletop.

Even the back is dotty :)

These are the rest of the blogs who are on the blog hop today.

Thanks for visiting mine, now if you want to be dotty, take a look at all the others.

September 12th

It's Sew Kiki

VroomansQuilts 

Kathy's Quilts

Quilt Doodle Designs

A Quilting Sheep

selinaquilts

Jane's Quilting

The Peach Patch

If you want to visit all of the blogs on their respective days, just click on my dots to dots button on the right of my blog.