When I saw this pillow by Heather from {House} of A La Mode, I thought: “My sister would love this”. She loves Matryoshka dolls. Isn’t that a cute project to try out paper piecing? Just like Heather, I had never tried it before. But, I went for it and made a pillow for my sister’s birthday which was last weekend. If you want to try it out yourself, the pattern is from this shop.

I’m not too original on this one. I liked Heather’s pillow and the one I’ve done is really similar. Pretty much only the colors and fabric print differ. I loved how she framed her block and quilted it with crossing straight lines. So, I’ve done the same except I’ve used felted wool. I even followed the same tutorial which is great. So, it kinds of feel like I’m rewriting her post.

I did made few errors on  my first attempt at paper piecing. I had to use my seam ripper a couple of times. The worst is shown in this photo. Can you tell what?

I did two right sides to my doll. I’ve sewn with the right side of the template up except for one piece. The one who should have been the doll’s left side. So, I had to redo this piece. Also, I underestimated the fabric I needed for the scarf. This was a fabric from my scraps and there wasn’t enough. So, I had to go pick some tiny pieces in the basket and sew them together to finish up the scarves. The remaining went pretty smoothly and I’m happy with the end result. I’ll definitively retry paper piecing.  I allows you to make designs that would have been very hard to figure out without the paper. And it gives precise result. Maybe next time I’ll make my own design just as explained in this post at Sew Mama Sew!.

For the face, I first draw a sketch on the paper piecing template. Then I transferred it using Glad Press’n Seal to embroidery it on the block. I had used this technique before for transferring quilting designs. But, it’s this post which shows some other cute nesting doll blocks that made me think about using it for embroidery.

For the back of the pillow, I did a lapped zipper. Here is a great tutorial on how to do it.