Diamond Patchwork Placemat

Week # 5 Project -- Diamond Patchwork Placemat -- This placemat project looked very simple to me, but turned out to be quite a challenge!  I wonder if any of my other Patchwork, Please! sew-along sewists felt the same??  I had such good success with the paper piecing method on the tea cozy, that I thought the simple lines on this one would be a breeze.

The instructions said to use a paper-piecing method or other preferred patchwork method...  I was demonstrating to my daughter-in-law how simple this method was ... and ... yikes!  How DO you get all these pieces in the right order when they repeat 1, 2, and 3 several times.  (That will only make sense to those of you who know the pattern!)

 The directions did not make sense to me for this strip, so I tried one way, but half was through realized it would not work, so out came the seam ripper!  Grrrr....  Then I tried another way, and came out with the shown results.  As you can see my corners are cut off a few places.  Double Grrrr....

Oh, well.  On this one I'll be happy with the overall look...

...which I love!  Red has been a favorite color of mine for the kitchen section of this sew-along.  Next week's project is a bib -- to kick off the "For Kids" section.  I'll be linking my project to the link section at LRStitched.