I am (stubbornly) hanging in there with the Striplate method. I have completed two sets of the short slashing. The blocking is the real headache, but I'm not convinced that I was doing it correctly. I ordered Debra Wagner's book 2 weeks ago from one of the used book sellers on Amazon, but no book yet, and the seller won't respond to my emails. I'm beginning to think this technique is cursed! :shock:

Looks great, Mary Ellen!

Thanks for the instructions, Margo. I will "practice" here and attempt to include a photo. The colors are not exactly true, The greens are really much greener and not so yellow.

I am ALMOST done with paper-piecing the triangle sashing units.

But I am now out of the turquoise, so I will have to await the extra fabric to finish up.

In retrospect, however, I would really urge Alex, John and the staff to consider sending enough fabric to allow people to cut their triangle strips 3 1/2" wide and made my cutting template 2 1/2" on the bottom horizontal. If you do that, you don't have to notch or anything. You just line up the tips of the triangles, center them over the paper strip and and stitch away, trimming each piece with the Add-a-Quarter ruler as Margo recommends. It goes very quickly, and you NEVER come up short. At the end, you trim away about 18 to 1/4 inch of "stuff" around each edge, and VOILA! And you can use those same triangles on the end pieces, so you don't have to cut a separate template for those ends.

You use more fabric, but it is a much less "picky" process -- and thus more enjoyable.

Of course, I now need more turquoise and orange, but I am counting on TQS to come up with a "package" that I can purchase or otherwise get so I end up with enough.

BethMI

adamsme wrote:

Instructions are here: [url]forum/forum-questions-and-suggestions/4275-tips-for-using-the-tqs-forum[/url]

Your unit looks great on the Show & Tell page!

I have a question. How do you add a photo when posting a reply to the Forum? For example, if I wanted to include a photo of my paper pieced sections here?

Yes, Beth. Watch for an announcement in the Newsletter, Daily Blog and here on the forum when the extra fabric is available for purchase.
Some will automatically be sent if you purchased the kit before the shortage from shrinkage was addressed, but it may not be enough extra for paper piecing if you didn't cut really small pieces.

I unfortunately, I began my paper-piecing before seeing Margo's video. I tried cutting my triangles more closely, but consistently found myself coming up short, so I began cutting my strips 3 1/2", and they worked. Now I'm sure I won't have enough fabric, since Margo suggests cutting the strips only 3". (I didn't know how to figure out those little nips, and so could not accurately place them without that extra fabric.)

For those of us who went ahead and stitched, will we have the option of purchasing more orange and turquoise dot fabric to finish our triangle strips?

BethMI

Finally I feel back to myself. All alone in the studio and time to work on the TQS BOM I cut one strip of each fabric and marked my cuts using Margo's template and disappearing pen on each strip. I then used my ruler to cut the pieces on the drawn line. I had purchased some vellum paper and printed off one page of Paper Pieces. Notice I am not advancing too far in my cutting and printing until I know for sure how it will work. Once I got in the swing of things, it went together rather quickly. Love Margo's idea of how to tear off the paper to avoid the schribbles(SP) too. Once done, measured and it's FREAKING perfect. Yahoo!

denise
http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a3df33b3127ccef24cda98507400000040O20AYuGrVk4bNGIPbz4Y/cC/f%3D0/ps%3D50/r%3D2/rx%3D550/ry%3D400/

Oh poor peeps! Well I hope everybody with the 'flu makes a speedy recovery. I am kind of glad now that my DH frog-marched me off to the Doctor in October to get the 'flu jab.

Reetzbobeetz wrote:
The powers-that-be are working on it! The current flu epidemic is slowing some things down!

Brilliant Margo. I agree with Connie that it would be great to have some sort of a link on the page with the instruction downloads. And also to have it on Margo's classroom page - which is getting very full now.

What a great tutorial. Margo does it again. One thing that I do when working with templates that are mirror imaged is to mark the template with a "R" so that I know which side to use as a mirror image. I never tried tearing out the paper the way that you did Margo but will definitely be trying it. Looks like it would take care of those pesky little bits at the tips. Great job, Margo.