A year ago you NEVER would have heard the words “I’m starting to like paper piecing” come out of my mouth. I think words like “hate”, “frustrating” and maybe even stronger phrases came out of my mouth related to paper piecing. But I persevered and made a few small paper-pieced projects including a mini Bird in a Bird House for my sister, a Penny Layman mountain block at Glamp Stitchalot 2016 and two Wanta Fanta blocks and one Busy block as part of my 2016 Bee Hive commitment. This year I made a replacement Busy Block using red violet fabrics and a paper-pieced LOVE pillow that made me feel much more confident with my paper-piecing skills. So I decided to try an even more difficult paper-piecing pattern by Juliet of The Tartankiwi, her mini doxie pattern (for some reason I cannot go into her Etsy shop link as I write this post). I have to tell you that this paper-piecing project was quite a challenge for me, but I’m happy with the final result. I did print the pattern at 120% to make it a bit bigger (and easier for me).

I added more of the light grey background and a darker grey border, and I quilted it with matchstick quilting to help smooth down the bumpy parts. Then I made it into a pillow cover as a birthday present for my stepdaughter who has a beloved dachshund named Pogo. I made her a quilt two years ago that also had dachshunds in it which I wrote about in a post entitled, My First Quilting Meltdown–Quilt #2. It’s nice to see how far I’ve come in my quilting journey, and I’m happy to report that sashing no longer sucks!!!

Linking up to Cooking Up Quilts: Main Crush Monday.