Dazzle block test 9/11/13

Not too long ago I discovered the Paper Piecing Party on Fridays at Quiet Play. I love the accuracy possible with paper piecing and was happy to see examples of other quilter's projects. One design that really spoke to me was "Dazzle," a new block designed by Esther who blogs at ipatchandquilt.wordpress.com. The following photo shows a gorgeous pillow she made from this block. Isn't that fabulous!

Since it is a new pattern, Esther was looking for volunteers to try it out for her, and I offered to be one of her testers. She emailed me the pattern with instructions and color options. One of my favorite things that she included was a page with line drawings of the design so I could try out my color scheme ideas. Here are a couple of versions. I decided to go with the second one, and you can see my fabric swatches for it at the bottom.

This pattern is constructed in 12 wedge-shaped sections with a total of nearly 100 pieces. You can see the numbers below my fabric swatches. I coded my foundations with these same numbers to help me get the right fabrics in the right places. I printed an extra set of foundations which I cut up to use as patterns for pre-cutting my fabrics. I like to rough cut my fabric to match the shape it needs to cover. You can see the red arrows in two areas which are there to help me keep the straight grain of the fabric at the outer edge of the block.

Piecing the pattern went pretty smoothly. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of that part of the process...except when I screwed up! I pieced all 12 of the wedges and started joining them together in groups of three, then into two halves of six wedges each. Unfortunately, I had gotten a couple of the groups of three switched in position, which left me with this: 

The biggest problem I had in making this block was in my fabric selection. I like the color scheme, but the two lightest yellow-orange fabrics are too close to the same and blend together too much. Not surprisingly, the most difficult part in making this block was matching up the twelve points at the center of the block. Mine isn't perfect, but it turned out pretty well. I need to go back in and close up the little hole where all the seams meet up at the center.

Here is my finished "Dazzle" block.

Thank you to Esther for allowing me to test your beautiful new block design. For anyone else interested, you can see her other patterns at Craftsy, or check out her blog here. I am linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and to the Paper Piecing Party on Friday at Quiet Play.

Julie in GA