And onto New Zealand ...

So work is still continuing on Should I Stay or Should I Go?  Click here, here and here for previous updates.

I needed to make a smaller scale Union Jack for the New Zealand flag and took the opportunity of making that to start to write the pattern for it.  Phew - there's a lot of toing and froing when writing a pattern.  If I had just been making the flag it would have been finished by the weekend but having to document each stage has slowed down the actual making stage. 

It certainly has been a steep learning curve writing a pattern, but I am almost at pattern testing stage.  I had already bookmarked the Pattern Writing Series that Cheryl over at Meadow Mist Designs had put together.  It really was a great read with lots of great advice and tips from her and other prominent pattern writing bloggers to boot.

This Union Jack is made up of 1" finished squares and will measure 25" wide by 12 1/2" high.  Luckily I used a Sizzix 1 1/2" square die to cut the squares approx 230 of them in all!  So this is where I am up to - fingers crossed I will get time to finish this today.

I also worked on the paper pieced stars for the body of this flag.  Paper piecing is really new to me and I am not sure yet whether I am a fan or not!!  I will post more about my process in another post but for now you can see the steps below ....

It looks such a mess at the stage below ....

But what I was left with, after much unpicking, resewing and maybe just a bit of cursing is this ....

I have to say that as a novice to this I am really pleased.  There are a couple of white strips that don't match up precisely but I think I may drive myself crazy if I try for 100% perfection.  Also those white strips finish at 1/8" so there's really not much room for manoeuvre!  I have another 3 to make so it will be interesting to see if they get better ..... or worse!

Linking up to Let's Bee Social today.