Foundation Piecing

Wow! I am just so thrilled with how well these blocks turned out, especially the string block on the left. Perhaps if the broken spider web, on the right, had been done in cool colours like the string block, I might like it as well. I'm not sure. I just know that the string block is now my favourite block. What can I say? It "speaks" to me. Of course, purples and greens are my favourite colours, so I'm sure that's a factor. I really like the broken spider web as well, but it just doesn't do for me what the string block does.
These are the 2012 BOM blocks for March. The technique learned is foundation piecing. I didn't even know what that was before doing these blocks. Basically, that is starting with background fabric and adding strips of different colours. Each of these blocks is actually four separate pieces sewn together. For the string block, it was four squares, to which the strips were sewn, then the squares were trimmed up and sewn together. For the broken spider web, I started with a large black square, which was cut on the diagonal both ways. The strips were then added to both ends of the resulting triangles. For this one, however, only the first strip was sewn to the background fabric. The following strips were just sewn to the previous strip.The background fabric was eventually cut away from behind the strips, eliminating the bulk that would have resulted. The only problem is I'm now left with 8 black triangles that I don't know what to do with... yet. Another problem I found with the string block is that all of that stitching on the background square pulls the fabric up a little bit with each row and the square ends up being a little smaller than desired. If I use this block again, I will start with the square slightly larger than I want the final product to be. 
You'll notice I used a different background to photograph these blocks. That's actually a piece of quilt batting draped over my ironing board. Shows off my blocks much better than my previous choices.
If you're interested in enrolling in this course, click on the Craftsy link on the right.