It takes a lot of discipline to overcome our sense of regularity, I've learned. Often I want to square off the misshapen corners and 'fix' bad lines almost by instinct. Here I worked at not letting myself come up with something too regular. It is a habit shared by every quilter who has made utility quilts and want nothing to go to waste. For these shapes it does take a bit more fabric, as you'll be trimming away the excess to get an 8 inch square.
These squares were foundation pieced on regular copy paper. Fold over a sheet, and cut off the part at the bottom to square it up. Or to put it another way, cut paper into 8 inch squares and put a stack by your machine, then foundation piece from the middle to the outside. Here I cut odd shaped pieces of fabric that I had hand-dyed, for the middles. Add, framing around the edge and use black as your outermost color sometimes. To give away the ending... I used black sashing to expand the top size and will post it after some more work.
So, having never used copy paper--- or rather so much of it, I was faced with a lazy quilter's dilemma. How do I peel off all of those backings? I tried spritzing with water and peeling with my fingernail, but that was a slow go. So I tossed the whole top in the dryer with some wet heavy towels and that got about half of the backings off. I threw those away, then tried washing in the washer. Hooboy. Don't try that. I ended up with lint galore on the front of all this black sashing and blocks. I'm finishing the top borders now, and will want to put it back in for another try in the washer before I spend a lot of energy batting and backing and quilting something that may always look fuzzified.
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