Small Pieces Spectacular Quilts giveaway

I was thrilled to be invited to be part of the blog tour for this second book written by authors Mary Elizabeth Kinch and Biz Storms. I own their first book and loved that so I knew this one was a must have.
The book starts off with some wonderful examples of antique quilts and there are lots of tips and tricks throughout the rest of the pages that make sewing small pieces a snap.

All the quilts are ones that I'd love to make but there are two in the book that call my name.

As it happens, they're both string pieced but with different methods.

The cheddar background in "Go With The Flow" is dynamic don't you think?

I also love the cover quilt, " Pumpkin Peel" which is a clever variation on two patterns I'm familiar with, Orange Peel and Double Wedding Ring.

I thought it would be fun to try and do a variation of the Pumpkin Peel pattern. I started by thinking that a doll quilt size would be a great place to start. The block for one quarter of the quilt is close to forty inches which is bigger than I wanted to go.

I decided to try shrinking the elliptical pieces to see if they looked workable and settled on a 60% reduction. That looked great but it also shrunk the seam allowance.

I made some new templates out of plastic, excluded the seam allowances then used a quarter inch brass wheel to redraw them.

I like to use a tearaway vilene for paper foundation piecing which I prefer over paper. I can see through it and it does come away easily with small stitches.

You may not have noticed but I roughly drew some guidelines following the angle of the arc so that my strip piecing wouldn't go wonky. I didn't actually use the lines for stitching, just for angling my seam allowance on the strips if I needed to.

Here's a tip if you do use paper. The ipad is a great little tool to have next to the sewing machine as it acts like a mini light table so you can check the pieces are lined up correctly.

I'm loving the rhythm of paper piecing and it's looking pretty good to me.

I'm thinking by now that if I do just the small arcs instead of the double arcs as in the pattern, that would keep the quilt small.  I'll cut the background about 22" -24" which would be the size of the doll quilt I'd want. As you might know, red is my favourite colour so why not use it for the background?

Then again, I love the cheddar too, what would you choose?

Before I make that decision, I'll carry on and mark my seam allowances on the front ready to applique the arcs to the background. Here I'm using a Clover chalk pencil.

What if I make a couple of the bigger arcs and see how they look attached the the smaller ones? I'm not finished playing just yet.

If you'd like to win a copy of this book, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post and I'll choose a winner on August 19th.

There's still a few stops on the blog tour for a chance to win a copy of the book plus I've included all the blogs that have participated so far. There are lots of  tutorials, reviews, tips and fun interpretations of featured projects to check out.

First stop, Sew Mama Sew

July 31 ~ Wonky World

August 10 ~ See How We Sew

Aug 20 ~ Amy's Creative Side
Aug 29 ~ Supergoof
Sept 3 ~ Quilts in the Barn
Sept 11 ~ Stitch This/Martingale
Sept 17 ~ Quilting with the Past

In addition, Mary Elizabeth has ten giveaways on her blog that is open until the September 25. Go here to enter.