English Paper Piecing, I love you!

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Do you know what English paper piecing is? I have heard of it for a very long time, but admittedly avoided it, thinking it is something slow and clunky and out-of-date and I would never be interested in it. But then, I stumbled across something, I can’t even remember what, and then I was making hexagons. Firstly, I purchased two books for my Kindle reader. One is All Points Patchwork, and the other is Quilting on the Go. These books really helped me get started with EPP.

Here is my brief explanation of what English paper piecing (EPP) is: It is a method of joining shaped pieces of fabric together using shaped paper as a stabilizer into a piece of patchwork that is used as a quilt or other smaller project. So I found a free printable template of hexagons in various sizes, and I printed a page on regular printer paper, carefully cut out the hexies, then cut some fabric larger than the hexie, then using a needle and thread, I shaped the fabric around the hexie and secured it with some stitches. The paper remains in the fabric only until that shape has been joined with other shapes. Then you remove the paper. If you’re careful, you can reuse the paper.

Here is the first thing I made with EPP hexies. It’s a pin cushion! I absolutely love it. These fabrics came from the very first jelly roll I ever purchased. I didn’t know what I’d ever make with it, but I loved the fabrics. The fabric strips in this jelly roll were 2 1/2″ wide, so it definitely limits you as to what size hexagons you can make. But for these, it worked out great.

I also made smaller hexies and made this bag. The bag pattern is a free, wonderful tutorial by The Sewing Chick, found here. I have made a few of her zipper pouches in the past, but this is the first time I’ve ever incorporated EPP into one.

It’s even lined! The Sewing Chick made a wonderful tutorial. I highly recommend you check it out!

Did I mention I was terrified of zippers? The tutorial helped me realize there really isn’t anything to fear.

Then I started making 60 degree diamonds to make these stars. Oh my stars. I am using a charm pack of fabric called 30’s Playtime by Moda Fabrics that I purchased from a private seller on eBay. Love them! Here is the first star I made.

Do you see the papers in the top of this photo? They have a hole in them to facilitate easier removal with a crochet hook.

I am making one star per day. Love them! I hope to incorporate these stars into a large stylish tote bag. I will likely use 60 degree diamonds in a white fabric to offset the stars.

Do you notice how crisp these shapes are? That’s because of the paper. In these stars, I used card stock instead of regular printer paper. I felt that the nature of the diamond needed a bit more substantial paper. Here is the back of a star.

In this photo, you can see my tack stitches. The stitches simply tack the folded fabric down without going through the paper templates. With larger shapes, your basting stitches will go through the fabric and the paper. This means when it’s time to remove the paper, you need to cut and remove your basting stitches. This step can be eliminated with glue basting, which I have yet to try. I have ordered a special glue pen for basting and should receive it soon.

There is something very therapeutic about English paper piecing. I suppose if I told myself I needed to make a queen sized quilt out of 1 1/2″ hexagons, I would be very turned off and not want to continue on. It sounds like it could be very monotonous and boring. I would likely give up, shove everything in a bag, and start something else. But what I love about this craft is the amount of control I have. Sometimes, I attempt to sew fabrics together on my machine, and I mess up. Or I make a quilt block and then look closely at it and all my mistakes I didn’t notice until things don’t line up. I find that very frustrating and discouraging. With EPP, I feel like because I am working by hand, I have so much control over how all these different pieces of fabric some together. Here are some other EPP things I have going on. I may not yet know what I’ll make with these, but I know I will make something because I really love the fabrics.

Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you learned something new today and perhaps this post piqued your interest in English paper piecing. I look forward to stitching more pieces and exploring more complex designs.

Cool WIPs and Finishes

I’ve been terrible about blogging lately because I keep so busy working on various projects!

However, it is time that I took advantage of the WordPress app on my phone to assist me with some posts. So let this be my first post written and published on my phone.

The title of this post may confuse some people who are not makers of things. A WIP is a work-in-progress. And I have a lot of WIPs. Many people who do what I do also have WIPs in excess of 2 or 3. That’s why you’ll sometimes see a YouTube video titled WIP Parade or a blog post about WIPGO which I have never participated in, but stay tuned.

So today, on this gray and chilly Sunday, I will post about my WIPs. But first, let me share with you a few finishes that I’m very pleased with.

The blackwork embroidery shown here is my first ever. I stumbled upon the designs at The Steady Thread on Etsy, and purchased the pattern here called Deco Cornflowers. I tried this on 28 count Monaco fabric and completed nearly one side of the intricate border then it all fell apart because somewhere I miscounted and therefore made a mistake which threw off the entire thing. I tried fixing it by picking out the mistake but it led to confusion, anger, heartburn, and a general malaise so I put it in time out. And I realized that the designer called for Aida cloth, not an evenweave such as Monaco, so I began again. And this time, I began from the very center out, and voila! It was a pleasure to stitch and I ended up visiting The Steady Thread website and purchased 4 (eek!) more designs.

Next finish is this quilt, which is called a string quilt. I started this within the last 5 or 6 years when I lived in Illinois. It’s another first for me. I had never been involved in a string anything–quartet, theory, bikini–okay maybe string cheese but I digress. I pieced this quilt in Illinois and then neatly folded it and placed it in a corner of my closet. So here in Minnesota, I dug it out and went, gee, Jenny, it’s time to finish this quilt cuz it’s really pretty and very nearly finished! So I attempted to quilt it on my regular old sewing machine and I literally couldn’t even manage a straight line. So I just happened to mention this project to a crochet acquaintance and she said her mom had a long arm quilting machine and she would do it. So I shipped it off to Nebraska and probably started 10 more new projects, because that’s what I do!

When the quilt came back from Nebraska, I purchased some binding fabric (twice, because I used the first fabrics for yet another project). I made a non-bias binding because I needed the stripe to line up in a perpendicular fashion to the quilt and I finished it. And man oh man, I love it.

Next up is an Easter quilt that I started and finished within a very short amount of time for me. My mother-in-law was mentioning that she didn’t have a wall hanging quilt for spring or Easter so I decided to get to work planning one using fabrics from my dear friend and talented designer, Sharla, and other fabrics I purchased at Joann’s. I discovered the amazing foundation paper pieced designs by Made By Marney and purchased a few bunny poses. This was so fun to put together and quilt

Next up is a small foundation pieced and hand quilted project, also for Easter, for my dear friend. This was yet another bunny design by Made by Marney that I modified to have three dimensional ears and “grass” in the basket. This was really fun to make. I simply affixed a ribbon to make it into a little wall hanging.

One more finish is one of the Chalkfull cross stitch patterns by Priscilla of Stitching with the Housewives and Hands On Designs called Hip Hop. This is also for my mother-in-law who has already received two other Chalkfulls mentioned in a previous post.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I present to you my cool WIPs…

Foundation pieced quilt blocks made years ago and now finally made i to a quilt top.

English paper pieced stars to be made into a large tote bag. I’m making one star per day with these 30’s Playtime fabrics by Moda.

English paper pieced hexagons to also be made into a tote bag.

The Bramble and The Rose by Inkcircles. This is my second start. More on that later.

Chalkfull design Bloom in progress for you guessed it, my mother-in-law. (She’s a lucky girl!)

I’m also working on Feast of Friendship by Blackbird Designs. I’m nearly finished but when I took it out to work on it last night, I realized I overstitched because that Dutch method of stitching is so nicely repetitive, I find I stitch more than I needed to. So I need to fix my error. I will have plenty of time to finish this and get it framed by Thanksgiving, which is my goal.

I have a few other cross stitch designs that have small starts but not a lot of talk about here. Basically my days lately have consisted of some English paper piecing, a little work on Bloom Chalkfull, and also work on the Inkcircles design as well as Feast of Friendship.

Next post I want to cover more in depth the English paper piecing I have only recently learned about. It’s so cool. It adds even more “cool WIPs” to my life.

Thanks for stopping by!

I’ve been a bit busy!

(I get no revenue from any links. I simply add links if you need to see a pattern or product or video I have used.)

Cross Stitching

My mother-in-law just had a birthday! And I was so thrilled to be able to stitch this piece quickly, get it fully finished and mailed to her in time! This is one of several lovely design collaborations by chalk artist and all-around fabulous stitcher and decorator, Priscilla Blain, and one of my favorite designers, Cathy Habermann of Hands On Design. I’m not a super fan of country decor, but I do love a Mason jar here and there. And these Chalk Full designs by the two women are perfection in my eyes.

Behold, Chalk Full Harvest!

I am so happy with how this turned out. I stitched mine on 14 count black Aida fabric with the called for “fancy floss” by Classic Colorworks and Gentle Art threads. I was concerned I didn’t have the right fabric to embellish the piece but I kept searching in my fairly small fabric stash and found this kind of batik-with-dots-style fabric I once purchased to make myself a night shirt. Well thank God that didn’t work out! (I am not a seamstress, after all). I simply cut strips of fabric 2 1/4″, attached them to become a longer strip, folded in half the long way and pressed. Then I used a good old needle and thread to make a large basting stitch along the unfinished edge and pulled gently to ruffle the fabric. Next, I glued it along the back of the finished stitching, which was wrapped and glued onto a piece of mat board.

Next, I crocheted a little sunflower and then added darker brown accents to the center of it with DMC floss and French knots. I cut some burlap, as well as a few ribbon pieces to make a bow. The bow and the stitching have magnets glued to the back so they can be easily removed from the metal cookbook stand, which I purchased at Hobby Lobby last year. This way, when I stitch more Chalk Full designs, I can put magnets on the back and my mother-in-law can simply swap out the designs as she sees fit.

Trash to Treasure

Pinterest, you sultry gal, I got sucked in again (happens daily) and this time, instead of a new idea popping up on my feed, I was browsing thru pins I already added to my Garden and Yard Board and found this: Giant Garden Alliums! I don’t remember when I added the pin that led to this delightful website, but it didn’t matter. The way my brain works is this: I looked at the photo of the crafted allium, I clicked to get to the instructions, I saw that a softball was needed, then my brain went: there’s a softball rolling around on the garage floor. Someone drew all over it with Sharpie. Your boys don’t play ball. GO GO GO!

So I went to my local hardware store, masked and hungry for supplies, and purchased nails, a 3 foot long threaded steel rod, and spray paint. And I made this!

Collage photo of the process of making a giant garden allium and a finished one

And it’s super cute but one isn’t enough. So I put out a call for more used softballs on Nextdoor and was able to get 11 more. Yay!! I also returned to the hardware store for more nails, rods and spray paint.

Quilts

Next up, something old. Not as old as me, but still. I don’t always finish projects right away. I may have mentioned this before. This first little gem is probably one of my very first attempts at piecing a patchwork quilt. I began this process when my first son was an infant. That was 20 years ago. Twenty.

I didn’t do a great job piecing and matching up all the angles, but it’s not terrible either. I was brand new at all these triangle pieces. Truth be told, I will always be brand new at it. I love the way they look but don’t really enjoy the process so much. Then at some point, I made it into a quilt sandwich and let it sit. I haven’t decided yet how to quilt it, but I did notice that I started hand-quilting it, which I don’t really remember…

Collage photo of a baby-sized calico quilt I began making twenty years ago

This is sized for a baby. I must have been thinking it would be for MY baby, who was just a wee little babe back then. Now he’s twenty! I love the variety of calico fabrics in this quilt, and maybe I will continue hand-quilting it at night while watching something good on TV.

The next UFO/PhD (unfinished object/project half done) is a larger, more modern string quilt! I made this when we lived in Illinois, so that means between 2009-2018, or something like that. String quilts are fun to me. You just grab some fabrics you like and piece a bunch of strips, or “strings” together, and then there are literally endless ways to incorporate blocks into a quilt. Again, get lost on Pinterest when you search for string quilts. I wish I could remember where I got the idea and/or inspiration for this one. It’s really fun, and it is a quilt sandwich now, meaning quilt top + batting + backing material. I dragged it out last month and then last week, I cleared off the ping pong table and set up my machine, thinking I was just going to quilt lines in one direction, maybe about 3/4″ apart. Well guess what. I haven’t quilted something this large before and thus I had a very difficult time managing that much fabric, even just to sew relatively straight lines! I did maybe 5 or 6 lines, then looked at my work and it was crap. It was not going to work out. So I painstakingly used my seam ripper and picked out all those stitches. Then I began again. And that’s where I left off. At the beginning.

Photo of a string quilt I am in the process of finishing

Collage photo of the string quilt and what went wrong as well as what might work.

I guess stay tuned??

Cards

Lastly, I want to share with you some cards I made. I was in need of some birthday cards for some dear loved ones and since I have a ready supply of basically everything paper craft-related, I consulted Pinterest for some ideas. (Do you detect a pattern?) Here are the cards I made most recently.

I like the simplicity of these cards. This is a great way to use different papers from the same collection, as well as mixing and matching to see what works. In some cases, I distressed the edges of the papers with an antique brown ink designed for such a purpose. I love to add tiny flowers or buttons as embellishments. You can see also that I added some hemp string as embellishments. This does make the card bulky in the envelope. I may need to get some thinner material next time. I used rubber stamps to add the words.

Oh one more thing

I ordered a custom paint-by-number kit of my younger cat, Dewey. It took a really long time to arrive but it did! And I unrolled it, gasped, had a bit of buyer’s remorse, then sucked it up and began painting. I cannot let this take twenty years. I work on it a little bit each day.

Photo of a paint-by-number in progress of my cat Dewey.

That detail! The kit of course came with tiny pots of all the colors I will need, which amount to shades of grey, brown, beige. I maybe should have thought more about which photo to submit to the company. In the photo this kit is based on, Dewey is in front of my stone fireplace. Hmmm….

Well, time to get back to work. Those softballs aren’t going to get filled with nails themselves! Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you are all safe and well. — Jenny

UFOs and PhDs (Unfinished Objects and Projects Half Done)

(I get no revenue from any links. I simply add links if you need to see a pattern or product or video I have used.)

I was talking with some online knitting/crochet friends via Hangouts the other day and we were talking about quilts. We somehow got on the subject of string quilts and I mentioned that I was saving all my fabric scraps from making face masks and will eventually incorporate them into a quilt project of some sort. This of course led me back to Pinterest, my favorite site, to look at all the beautiful string quilt projects out there.

This happened before, and that perusing became quite productive, as I did actually make a string quilt top, which is still in my storage room in a container. Hmmm…that’s not where I intended for it to land, and how many years ago was this?? So I got to thinking about all the neat projects I have started–and not finished. And I decided it’s time to finish up, or give it up, if I’m not feeling it.

I started with a basket I keep right at my feet in my craft room. It contained two table runner projects, one pieced and quilted with some homespun fabrics, one put together with just three fabrics, and quilted in a basic diamond design, a pair of knitted socks in need of repair, and a small punch needle of a fish that needed its final finishing.

The first of these I tackled were the homespun quilt, which was either going to be a table runner or a wall hanging. It was literally so long ago that I cannot possibly remember! I was inspired by a quilt book called Fast, Fun & Fabulous Quilts published by Rodale Press. The quilt was called Stars and Scraps Forever by Judith Hughes Marte.

Collage photo showing details of the "before" version of the homespun quilt and progress photos of the new binding.

I was in a hurry apparently, when I attempted to bind this quilt I made, because I believe I used prepackaged red bias binding and either didn’t take the time to learn how to properly attach quilt binding, or I just didn’t care. (Sometimes I get in that mode of not caring too much–I almost always regret it.)

So I had to remove the terrible red binding, then I found some black fabric in my stash, but it didn’t feel like 100% cotton, more like a stiff cotton blend. I made single fold binding and attached it like a pro, thanks to this wonderful YouTube video by Fons & Porter. Then came time to sit and hand sew the binding to the back of the quilt. Since it’s not a large piece, it didn’t really take too long. I did have some difficulty with pulling my thread through the new binding fabric, so I conditioned my thread with Thread Heaven. It’s a great product to have around.

And here is the finished quilt!

Next, I had to repair my hand knitted socks. These socks, called Tuscany, are by designer and sock earth angel Melissa Morgan-Oakes, who is a best selling author. I purchased her book Toe Up Two At a Time Socks after borrowing a copy from my library and realizing I needed it in my own personal library for ever. I have made a few pair from this wonderful, fully instructional book. I highly recommend this book if you wish to knit socks two at a time, with all the information you need for sizing, fiber choice, etc. There are several wonderful sock patterns in just one book. (I do not receive any commission whatsoever for providing links.) All I had to do was better reinforce the toe. I don’t know what yarn this was but I wasn’t thrilled with it. The stitch pattern does look really nice, but I felt that the yarn might not hold up to my needs around heels and toes. Now that I can wear them instead of staring at them in disrepair, we shall see how they hold up!

Photo of hand knit socks, pattern called Tuscany

This is a collage of three photos of me wearing the hand knit Tuscany socks.

Next I wanted to “final finish” my little punch needle of a fish. I probably started this project about 3 or 4 years ago, then finished the punching while living here in Minnesota. Then I didn’t fully finish the project, but rather stuck it in that basket under my desk. This little design came from a pack of 9 iron-on transfer designs in American Folk Art style by DMC. I had completed one other one from this collection and framed it in a shadow box for a dear friend. So I found a little $3 frame months ago that I thought would be a good piece for displaying finished needlework of some sort. I unwrapped it, but soon realized it was not going to work, as my punch needle piece is really a rectangle, while the frame is definitely square. I tried to make it work, with ribbon, etc, but I just wasn’t feeling it. So I proceeded to attach the punch needle work to a small piece of sticky board, and silly me, when I went to reposition the work on the sticky board, some threads stuck to the sticky board and came right out of the work! Arggh!! A short string of profanity followed. Then I had to dig out the Russian punch needle, the hoop and embroidery floss and fix what had come out. Luckily this great little design is very forgiving in that there are so many lovely blues and greens and even tans and grays in the water portion that you don’t need to be precise with color placement. I had it fixed in no time, then instead of repeating my mistake again, I went to the window to help me line up the needlework on the sticky board, and then simply folded the extra monks cloth fabric to the back, added a few magnets and boom–I now have a fishy magnet.

Collage of four photos of the fish punch needle

Photo of the finished fishy punch needle magnet

Lastly, I had another table runner project to finish. Again, I cannot remember when I made this, but it never had a binding, so I did purchase the green fabric before the quarantine and lock down went into effect, so I simply made single fold binding out of 2 1/4″ strips of the fabric. I did not cut bias binding, but rather, cut on the grain, because I knew I would not have any curvy parts to bind. Again, I used the Fons & Porter video mentioned above to attach the binding with such a great finish. It’s a bit fiddly to finish it off but it works like a charm.

Collage of photos of my quilted table runner project getting a nice binding.

I realize my green thread doesn’t match well but you don’t even see it! I love the wonder clips by Clover for holding the binding in place just a few inches away from my hand sewing. I also use the clips when I’m sewing face masks with fabric ties. They are great! I can highly recommend.

I just have to show off this funny photo of the finished piece in my living room with our youngest cat, Dewey, hanging out on his banana. 😉

Photo of the finished diamond quilted table runner with my cat Dewey in the background.

Thanks for stopping by! I feel pretty good about getting these projects completed. Now I will have to dig out the larger quilt projects I have in my storage area that need finishing and decide how to proceed. I hope you have a wonderful day! — Jenny