Valentine, I love you beary much!

I love paper piecing!  It is a great way to use up scraps and you never quite know what you are going to end up with.  I wasn't sure if the brown paper I chose for this little guy was going to work out.  I was a little worried that he might look like he has chicken pox!  Now that he's done, I think he's cute!

 

I have a light box, so I scanned the pattern, then used the light box to trace the pieces directly onto the paper I planned to cut them from.  It's much easier than tracing and transferring. I also cheated a little bit on this one.  Normally, would trace the pieces in pencil, cut them out and mat them on black card stock.  After that, I would trim the card stock, leaving a 1/8 to 1/16 inch black border, but I ran out of black card stock and there weren't any craft stores open late at night, so I just traced the pattern pieces with black ink. That was MUCH faster, and I think it looks almost as good as the other way.

This pattern came from one of my favorite resources for paper piecing,  a book called 202 Paper Piecing Patterns by Annie Lang.  I bought my copy several years ago, so I don't know if you can still get it. If you can, it's well worth picking up.  It includes clear instructions on how to use the patterns as well as completed full color examples of each one.  And of course, the art is just plain adorable!

I have done several other cards using patterns from this book.  A few of them can be seen at: http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/paperpiece.html