Getting the hang of it

Block for breast cancer awareness auction, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

I volunteered to make a pink block for a quilt that will be auctioned for a breast cancer awareness auction in October.  The call was put out by Dana on Flickr.  I thought it would be a good chance to practice the paper piecing skills that I'm trying to sharpen up. After making Jessica's 9 1/2" block, I was ready to try a bigger one: this one is 12 1/2". It's called Divided Star and the original pattern by Marcia Hohn is here. Please forgive the quality of the photo - I had to arm-wrestle my daughter for a spot on the bathroom counter where the light was best - it's so overcast today there was no hope of an outside shot.

I think I'm getting the hang of paper piecing. Things I like: awesome, really skinny points and sharp corners that look good and match up well,and , also, the intricacy that a paper-pieced block allows. But I still struggle with knowing how big to cut the fabric to make sure it will fit once it's sewn and flipped. I seem to have a zero-sum approach - either the piece is too small, or it's so big that I end up cutting away twice the amount that I actually needed. Either way, it seems to be a shockingly profligate way of block assembly.

You may think I have some chutzpah signing this up for Sew-n-Tell Friday, since that's supposed to be for finishes, and how can one measly block qualify as a finish? But this is a finish since I'll be sending it in as is, but also because it took hours to do! Every little step I take in paper piecing seems like a huge accomplishment to me!