January's Lucky Stars Blocks

I finished my first paper pieced blocks for the Lucky Stars Block of the Month- and I have to say, they were harder than I thought!  I like the way they came out in the end, but man, they took me a while to perfect.   

It didn't take me too long to catch onto the paper piecing technique, which is fun except for the excessive amounts of scraps I seem to end up with (I tried to eyeball the blocks and cut smaller pieces, but after sewing and flipping a half dozen times only to discover I had shortchanged the size, I gave up and cut them according to the directions).

Not even a fraction of all the scraps I created...

The biggest problem I had was with the centers which just didn't line up right.  I found a few tutorials online and tried the suggestion of putting a pin in the center and sewing from there outside in either direction.  That evened up the center, but then I had to go back and re-align some of the outer seams.  Biggest lesson: starch starch starch!  Things went a lot easier on the January block when I heavily starched right off the bat to keep the bias from creating too much stretch.  

On the left are the yucky center seams, and the right they are somewhat fixed.

These took a lot longer for me to make than I thought they would, but there was a lot of trial and error involved.  I'm looking forward to February when I can hopefully put all these lessons to good use.

Happy Tuesday!