Slice of Pie

Slice of pie anyone?  Hopefully this looks like lemon tart- tart au citron if you are feeling fancy- my November block for Anna in the Ringo Pie bee.  She asked for desserts.  

The inspiration for this came from  Nigella Lawson's Feast.

The photography in her books is always stunning- I return to her Christmas book each year to get myself  in the festive mood.  This block looks all clean and tidy and nicely together now but its construction had some challenges.

I like to paper piece with freezer paper and Damian often trims my pieces for me adding the 1/4" on the edges as too much rotary action makes my arms ache.  I only had a little yellow fabric ( from out of print Katie Jumps Rope, Denyse Schmidt) and had squeezed the pieces on.  For unknown reasons he trimmed all the pieces perfectly, except the three yellow triangles which either had one side 1/8 inch or in the worst case, both sides. (This makes me think of Both Sides Now- Joni Mitchell)

I had enough fabric to recut the smallest but the other pieces had to be rescued to make the edges resilient enough o be pieced with less than 1/4" seams.  Fray check to the rescue.

I ran this along the sides of all the affected pieces, left to dry and it saved the day.  I double stitched the seams for extra strength but the Fray check is what really helped.  I think I will use it again for tricky paper piecing, especially little shapes cut out of fraying fabrics, it really helped.  Don't plan for 1/8 edges again though- Damian said he was encouraging my powers of ingenuity.  Didn't feel like that at the time but as always to err is useful and I am so grateful that he understands 1/4" edges all the rest of the time

Elise from Elusive Reveries has picked me in her 15 blogs list for A Lovely Blog Award.  A big thank you to her, take a look at her blog, she finds the most lovely links and ideas to put on there.   I am always really touched when people take the time and effort to choose and list my blog in any way- following, blog rolls, award.  I know some don't always like to feature awards so I am treading lightly.  I always look at profiles of new followers or those of you who comment to see if you have a blog and I find some really interesting things so these are from the last 6 followers  where I found an active and recently posted blog link- you are an interesting and diverse bunch xxx

http://stashmanicure.blogspot.com/

http://stipje.blogspot.com/

http://jednoiglec.blogspot.com/

http://beeware-tuffinstales.blogspot.com/

http://sewquine.blogspot.com/

http://indigohoney.blogspot.com/