Alison's Guiding Light

Alison's Guiding Light is a relatively simple block, but at 4.5 inches finished, the pieces are tiny. Some of the pieces have seam allowances that are bigger than the piece you see.

Holly and I both did this block as a template block and then as a paper-pieced block.

Tamplate Method:

Templates for Alison's Guiding Light

 Holly and I both used the templates in the picture (we figure if we share the templates through the whole quilt, we could save a small tree!) to cut our fabric for this block. Holly cut her pieces old school.  She laid the template piece on top and held it there with no pins while cutting with her trusty scissors. I, on the other hand, took the templates and fabric to my cutting mat and used a rotary to cut out all the pieces. For the last 2 blocks, I cut mine out the old school way and was having trouble with it. I found the rotary to be much easier for me to handle.

Pieces cut using templates

 Unfortunately, we both forgot to take any pictures between cutting out the pieces and the finished block.  Oops. The best we can do now is tell you how we sewed them together.

We started by sewing 2 of the purple triangles to the white stick (on an angle above) that goes between them. Once we had 4 units like that, we sewed 2 of the small white squares to one of the outer purple sticks as laid out above. You should have 2 of these units. After pressing, we sewed 2 of the units that used the purple triangles to the straight white sticks on either side, yielding 2 units. Next, we sewed the 2 large units to either side of the long white stick in the middle and then the 2 remaining outer purple sticks to opposite sides of the full unit. Last, sew the 2 units of purple sticks and small white squares to the sides you didn't sew the outer purple sticks to. Use a finished block or a diagram as your guide.

Mary's finished Template-pieced block

 Hopefully, your block turns out as nice as mine (above) and Holly's block did.  :)

Now, for the paper-pieced block...

Paper Pieced Method:

Paper-pieced template

Above is the template we used for our paper-pieced block. Unfortunately, we had to use 3 prints of that for our 2 blocks due to a couple of mistakes. Oops. We also didn't take any pictures as we constructed this block. Oops again! What were we thinking? We will definitely try to do better next time...I promise!

Anyway, to construc the paper-pieced block, the order printed on the pieces works great. Follow carefully and you should be fine. One tip, though...once you start piecing units together, make sure you remove some of the paper bits as you go or they are sewn in there forever. Mine will forever have a few bits of paper inside of it.

Now, for the comparison. I found it harder to get my corners and points to line up with the paper pieced pattern on this one. For this block, for me, the template pieces were definitely better than the paper-piecing.

Our finished blocks

Pictured above are mine and Holly's finished blocks. Paper-piecing on the left and template piecing on the right. Holly's on top and mine on the bottom.

Feel free to link pictures of your blocks up on the right of the blog and share any tips you may have or problems you discovered in the comments.

Mary