The Lion Wall

I borrowed the title of this post from Only Connect, a UK game show that in our house is addictive but largely impossible.  We get very excited if we get one question right in the entire show!  I bought the Heart of a Lion pattern for this quilt from Etsy and it was my first go at a Foundation Paper Piecing.  It was a baptism of fire and I had a few moments when I thought I’d just chuck it into the UFO (unfinished objects) box, never again to see the light of day.  However, I persisted, finding a way that worked for me, and I’m so glad I did.

The pattern came with three size options so I chose the largest as I though that would be the easiest for a beginner.  After printing out all the pages on thin paper (I found this paper on Amazon and the reviews said it was perfect for FPP), I then trimmed and assembled them.  I used the guide sheet and coloured pencils to indicate which colours were applicable to each section.

Each section is numbered showing the order in which to sew the pieces.  I’d watched a few YouTube videos on how to do this and in principle, it’s quite straight forward.  What made this challenging was the angles of the pieces, which had my brain in a fuzz.  I’d cut out the piece I thought would fit, only to find it didn’t as the angles were reversed when the fabric was flipped back.  After wasting a lot of fabric and getting immensely frustrated, I decided not to cut each piece first but sew it onto the whole piece and cut afterwards.  It’s a little unwieldy but it worked for me and there was a lot less waste (and swearing!).  For this section, I was working on attaching the black triangle H1 to the dark yellow H2 triangle but instead sewed the H1 to the whole piece of yellow fabric, right sides together.

One of the tips I picked up from the videos was to use a short stitch length as it makes the paper easier to remove at the end.  What it makes harder though is to unpick if you mess up!  After stitching, I folded the pattern back on itself along the stitch line…

…and trimmed the seam to ¼” using an Add-a-Quarter ruler and rotary cutter.

I flipped the fabric back over and pressed the seam with my mini-iron.

Then I folded the pattern back to cut roughly around the H2 triangle, leaving around ½” spare.  I was then ready to move onto the next piece which I completed the same way.

After sewing all the parts of section H, I trimmed around the finished piece, the pattern has a ¼” seam allowance built into it.

The section was turned right side up, sprayed with starch and pressed.  The paper pieces are left in at this stage to help maintain the stability of the piece.

Each of the sections is sewn together in a specific order to form one of the three larger sections which make up the quilt.  This one made up the right eye section, with this piece being placed just above the eye.

The other two sections were assembled the same way.

Last, the three sections were sewn together and the paper pieces removed from the back.

I’m going to make this into a wall hanging rather than a quilt.  As my sister pointed out, it’s art not soft furnishings!