Worn out from two back-to-back trips, I spent the day quietly hand-sewing my Circles Block #1, Swirlygig, using the English Paper-Piecing Method. A couple of weeks ago, I had decided I wanted to m…

Simple Star quilt block tutorial using 60 degree triangles

Our English paper pieced diamonds quilt along is at a whopping 81 members! Thousands of diamonds have been cut, basted & pieced. Millions of stitches have been taken! Let's take a look at the projects as they are coming along: Clare of Summerfete has been quilting! Her 2" diamonds are lovely. Carolyn has a nice big section started: Carolyn aka Laughing Duck  Traci of Stolen Moments has some good tips to share: Traci of Stolen Moments Lesly at Pickle Dish has been piecing for almost a year.. Amanda of Home Designs by Amanda is just starting, man I love the fabric selection stage! I love the fabric Teegzie is using: Teegzie's orange diamonds Audrey Pawdrey has started with some pretty funky stars. Luv2sign99 has some nice bold stars: Luv2sign99's bold stars. Nuria of La casina roja has started too, and she has the sweetest sewing box! And here's mine. I've been shooting for 2 stars a day since our Greek vacation started, but I don't always make it.. Travel Quilt #3 If you would like to see more or join us, please visit the quilt along page!!

This, the second block in my Block of the Month quilt ‘Dreamcatcher Round the Year’ , is a favourite of mine! For those of you who came in late, this quilt is being made in two colourwa…

The Brimfield Star EPP block is a cousin to the famous Brimfield Block. This English Paper Piecing pattern uses the same pieces as Brimfield Block except for the “tall house”. Take a look at the negative spaces between the original Brimfield Block and the star version. The difference between the two is that the negative space of Brimfield Block looks like a cog on a wheel. When you remove the tall house pieces (the piece connecting the orange peel sections), there is extra free space to fit one more orange peel section. The 5th orange peel section makes the center of the block look like a star! If you love Brimfield STAR but think you might want to make the original Brimfield Block one day, we suggest buying the original Brimfield Block window acrylics. These acrylics work for both blocks. NOTE: The English Paper Pieces and Templates are NOT Included with the pattern.  English Paper Piecing uses paper templates onto which fabric is wrapped to create shapes that are sewn together by hand. The Brimfield Block EPP design is appliquéd onto a square of fabric to make a 14″ finished block. A Brimfield Block Quilt is composed of 12 blocks. The finished quilt size measures 61″ x 47″. The pattern includes 10 instructional pages and a coloring sheet.  The Brimfield Star Block Complete Paper Piece Pack contains all of the Paper Pieces to make the Brimfield Star Block Quilt by Kim Martucci and Nisha Bouri of Brimfield Awakening. Easy to tear specialty perforated Paper Pieces allow the blocks to be customized. Includes enough to make 12 blocks. Options: Choose your pattern/template options from the menu below.

Compass Rose Number 15 of the circles blocks in Shine: The Circles Quilt About this time, I was running out of ideas for another two circle blocks, so of course I turned to the internet, but didn…

Quilting ruler storage simple tip using Command hooks. My latest Round We Go English Paper Piecing blocks + my favorite EPP tips and supplies.

Today, Aylin, who blogs at ayliN - Nilya is here to explain English Paper Piecing to us. Aylin's EPP work, and all her quilting, is stunning, and such an inspiration to me - do check out her blog if you don't already know her or if you want to join in her EPP quilt along which she is starting soon. I am sure you will be inspired by her lovely tutorial to give EPP a try and if you already EPP, you will find her tips and tricks helpful. Welcome to the magic of EPP. I'm Aylin and Leanne introduced me so warmly, that I would love to thank her for inviting me to be a guest on her blog. English Paper Piecing (EPP) is an old traditional technique to sew parts together by hand where the parts are reinforced with paper-templates. Why do we sew by hand in times of modern machines? What's the magic about EPP? Well, I can tell you why I love EPP. This is the most relaxing way of sewing to me. You can take your project or parts of it with you where ever you go and do some stitches. Even if you only sew one seam, it is worth to take it with you. I do EPP sometimes in the car while waiting for my daughter picking her up from basketball exercises. It is a good way to kill the time. And you see your project growing slowly and getting more and more beautiful. Maybe it's even a kind of therapy or meditation - it's just you and your little project in your hand. I find myself pausing from time to time and looking on my sewing or even stroking it. Well, seams as if I am a sewing nerd :). If you have done some EPP projects, this is not new to you, but if not, I will tell you roughly the steps of making EPP. If you are starting totally new, I would recommend hexies or pentagons, because here the angles are wider and easier to sew. The main focus of this post will be to find a pattern for an EPP project. Templates So if you know what pattern you are going to sew, you need the templates for the parts of your pattern. When I started my fist EPP-project, I used thicker paper and drew my templates on it and cut them out. This is not the way you should do it, only if you have very random shapes. That was before I saw any quilting books or the quilting-world-wide-web. Then I discovered, that you can buy paper templates as precuts which is a very comfortable, but maybe a bit expensive if your project is a bigger one. You can also use plastic templates which you can reuse a lot of times, but I have only seen them as hexies. I have to confess, that I never had a chance to try the plastic templates yet. I just print my templates on normal paper and cut them out. There are pros and cons for each of those methods and you have to find your own best way. I use only self printed paper templates, because they give me more flexibility in time and size, and it is much cheaper with the basting technique I use. I only glue my parts (next step). The precut templates made of paper are easy to use, but you cannot get all shapes in all sizes and you have to know what you exactly need. The plastic ones are great, if you make lots of projects and reuse those templates again and again, but you are fixed with your size and shape. If you want to print your own templates you can find them for example here on incompetech. You can vary the angles of triangles or diamonds on this page until you find the right template. Fabric Cutting So if you have your templates, it´s time to look for fabrics. EPP is predestined for fussy cutting, but of course fussy cutting is not necessary. If you like to fussy cut your parts, you should cut one of each template on a harder plastic so you can use them as master-templates. You can also make a frame while cutting your template out of a bigger piece of paper. This little Tula-Creature-Mugrug is an example of how to fussy cut. The head of the frog is made of two hexies, so I needed two motifs of the fabric to make this one head. Fussy cutting is a beautiful way of showing motifs, but it is also a fabric consuming way. Just beware and think before you cut into you precious fabrics ;-). Just lay your plastic template on your fabric to find your right motif and cut it out - don´t forget the seam allowance. Cutting the fabrics for EPP is done in very different ways by different people. Some people precut squares for hexies, triangles or diamonds, and some cut strips. I have to tell you that I am very sloppy with cutting fabrics for EPP. I always take more than 1/4 Inch for the seam allowance so it will not matter too much if my fabric is not always parallel to the template. I cut the fabric in my hand with scissors or with a rotary cutter on a mat (sometimes with a ruler). I just use what's handy. Wrapping the Fabric around the Template Now you have your templates and your fabrics cut. The next step is to wrap the fabric around your template. There are three methods to do so. Well, I have tried a fourth one with my first EPP Project, but that was because I didn't know better :). I pinned all six sides of the hexies with needles and so I was always pierced by the needles while sewing together. Of course this is nothing you should do. It hurts, I can tell you. The easiest and quickest way of basting the fabric around the template is to glue it. This is the way I prefer, because this is the part of EPP I don´t like to much. Of course you can only use this method with paper templates and you have to buy the glue pen. I use the Sewline Fabric Glue Pen, but there are others too. You can remove the templates afterwords, but the templates cannot be used again. Another method is to sew through the fabric and paper template (see the two photos below on the left). Here you have to remove the thread before you can remove the templates. The last method is to sew only the corners of your folded fabric without going through the templates (see the photos below on the right). This is the only method you can use with plastic templates. The advantage of this method is that you can remove the templates without removing the thread. For all three methods, be careful not to pull the fabric so tight over the template edges that the paper bends or warps. You still need some space to sew the parts together. It can help to use clips to fix the folded fabric around the template - some recommend paper clips or Clover Wonder Clips. I haven´t used them yet, because I glue my parts. Whatever method you use, you should fold the fabric always in the same direction around your template. This makes it easier to sew the parts together and to get neat points. This is very important, when you have pointed angles. In addition it looks nice from the back. It´s up to you, whether or not you finish basting all your parts before starting sewing the parts together. Usually that´s not me :). I prepare some parts and sew them together and start with the next parts. Let me show you some steps of my ferris wheel pillows. Sewing the parts together Now it´s time to sew your parts together. Take two parts together right side facing the right side at the seam you want them to sew together. When you sew your parts together, you have to note some things: Use a colour for your thread that is the most unobtrusive - of course this depends on your fabric choice. If you have only dark fabrics you should use a dark thread. I use off-white colors with lighter projects and darker grey for darker projects. Of course you can change the color of the thread for every seam. Cotton, polyester or silk? This is a philosophy and I will not solve this question. I use polyester for my EPP, because I think it´s stronger. Some say silk goes better through the fabric, while others only use cotton. Avoid knots and stitch some stitches at the same place for fixing the thread at the start and do so from time to time and at the end of a seam line. Start the same way at the next template Use a thin needle. Sew small stitches (there are different methods to sew the seams). Don´t sew through the paper templates when joining the parts. If you do, your stitches will be to big once the paper is removed and you will see them later on the right side. It also makes the templates harder to remove. Corrections: If you see that your next template will not fit in neatly, you can manipulate it if you have paper templates. Just pull or push or fold the fabric in the right direction. Of course you can only manipulate differences up to 1/8 inch or a little more. Here you can see the one stitch I made bigger for you with orange thread. Putting the parts together There are also different ways to put your parts together. You can finish one motif (e.g. a flower) after the other and then bring them together at the end or you can sew one motif to the next and see your project growing. Some sew EPP in lines and some sew it in motifs. Just find your way. It depends on my mood and the time I have for a project. If I have enough time I sew in motifs. If it has to be quicker, I sew in lines. Sewing in lines will be faster, but sewing in motifs satisfies me most. Removing Templates The templates will be removed only when the parts are surrounded by other parts, or when you have finished the whole project. I remove only some parts and iron them before removing the next ones so the seams are fixed neatly. Quilting Now to quilt your Project. I prefer to quilt my EPP´s because I am afraid that a seam could open. This has never actually happened to me but I am very careful. You should avoid quilting in the seams with EPP. When I make pillows from EPP I always use fusible interface to fix it all. And I wash my EPP´s only by hand. Tutorials for Sewing EPP You can find lots of tutorials for all the steps of EPP and this tutorial should only show you a quick overview. Now lets start finding our EPP-Pattern for the next Project. I promise you, if you go through your everyday life you will see so many EPP-Patterns. Get inspired by your flickr and internet friends. My daughter used to go to a Painting Artist School and they had a great teacher and that´s her philosophy: copy or cloning doesn't exist, you only get inspired by the work of others. The floor of a shop. And to tell the truth, you see so many beautiful and stunning projects in the internet, that your brain is full of all these impressions so that you cannot always distinguish or remember where you saw each idea....... Just go for it! Of course it is nice to mention the person who inspired you if you can remember. There are lots of books showing you how to make EPP - two of them I would love to introduce to you: The one of them is from Hilde Klatt and Liesel Niesner called "Liesels Sechsecken-Technik". Ok, you will say: now it is crazy recommending to us a book in German, but there are so many useful pictures it might be helpful, even if you don´t understand the text. Have a look in this book: And the other book is the one from Tacha Bruecher called "hexa go-go". She is a quilt friend of mine living in the same city as I do and an absolute EPP maniac. Her book is lovely and she gives lots of tips sewing hexies. Shapes for EPP To show you the range of shapes you usually use in EPP, I put them together for you. So this is nothing new, it's geometry and it's a good reason to listen to maths in school, that´s what I tell my daughter ;-). Be aware as I don´t want confuse you. On the next picture you see all shapes being in a 6 pointed diamond. You always use the same side length or a multiple of it. In my drawings you will find (0.5), 1, and 2 inches. All the drawings are made on prints from incompetech. For making an equilateral pentagon you need a compass and a set square. With these shapes you can make lots of patterns. This is my recent EPP-long-term-proect: My Flower Garden. The connecting fabric will be grey and there will be all kinds of flower shapes to become an irregular flower garden. Here you can see the shapes I used: My latest EPP Project was a pillow for Swappen auf Deutsch 3. I saw this cover of a book and I knew I wanted to make it with fabric. First I had to find my motif, because this Pictures gives you so many possibilities. In this case it is easier to copy it in back and white, so the origin colours will not influence you so much. Then I had to think about the templates I needed here. These are not the usual 6 (60°) or 8 (40°) Point Diamonds. 5 Point Diamonds have an angle of 72° and you cannot find them easily to buy as precuts, but you can find them on incompetec, where you can vary the angle. Also I needed 10 Point Diamonds with 36°. I can tell you, this is a project I really had to pull and fold my shapes because it isn´t that easy to get so many points together with different angles. Doesn't this look cosy? Sitting on the sofa covered with lovely quilts doing some EPP - that´s magic ;-). Funny, but my pillow for Swappen auf Deutsch 2 was also a EPP pillow. I sat at the table and started to draw an pattern. Later I realized, that I must have been inspired by a picture taken by Brioni-flossyblossy I saw on flickr, but I really had forgotten it. That´s why my pattern was totally EPP and hers was EPP appliquéd on fabric. As you can see my hexies here are not real hexies with equalateral sides. That´s a problem with drawing on squared paper. You will move your pen on lines or going from one corner to the other and that brings different shapes as if you make your pattern for example on hexie paper. In this case I drew my master templates on squared paper while increasing my layout in the size I wished and copied the master template. As you can see I had really pointed angles which is not a real beginner project. But if you know me a bit, you know that I am not afraid of anything in piecing. What´s the worst could happen? It doesn't work - so what? So you try again or leave it, that´s it. Nobody is going to laugh at you or even punish you. It´s my quality time and I decide what to do with it. It´s not failure, just the braveness, that I tried it! Here are some other drawings of mine. Maybe I will make them into quilts or pillows some time. Feel free to get inspired ;-). So dear readers of this post, if you really got to this point you made me so happy - thank you for staying tuned. Maybe I can see some of your EPP projects soon - even if you already started, this might be the reason to go on and finish it. I will start a EPP-QAL at the beginning of February, and you are invited to come and join - watch for news on my blog ayliN-Nilya! Here more of of my EPP finishes... Thank you Aylin! If you have not yet linked up your Q4 FAL finishes, please click here to go to the linky to add one link for each of your qualifying finishes. If you are working on one last finish, you can link up your other finishes now, so you don't miss the deadline for linking - midnight M.S.T. January 8, 2014.

There is no reason on earth not to use EPP for curves, as long as they are gentle. I decided to try it after looking at OPQuilt - Elizabeth has started an interesting monthly QAL of EPP circles. Here's my finished block, which is about seven inches across the circle: Not being too good at using a compass, I downloaded Polar Graph Paper from a great free website called Incompetech. As well as Polar graph paper you can get hexagons, triangles and other stuff here. You can fiddle around with the settings (colour, line width, number of radii etc). Useful for foundation piecing as well as EPP. I just went with the default settings and my circles fitted neatly onto an A4 page. I drew my design onto the graph paper and numbered the pieces. Work in progress. I found it helped to cut the fabric on the bias where the curve was concave. ..and the back. I kept the paper pieces in while I did the appliqué, thinking it might help to keep everything flat. Then I cut the back out to remove the papers. Not sure if that worked - there are quite a few layers of fabric in places. It's a bit crinkly. But I intend to add more crinkles later on in the quilting. 37 pieces to add to my overall total for this project, so I'm now up to 823 for Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count.

Life in the gnome home has been a little bit crazy with the end of the school year and some...

Find here all the Free Tutorials from top US quilting blog, Diary of a Quilter including Beginning Quilting Step by Step, baby quilts, bags... Click here!

Create an EPP version of the plus quilt with free printable templates.

Enjoy the sunshine and fresh air while working on a summer English paper piecing project, featuring a variety of colorful and playful designs that are perfect for creating beautiful and portable quilting projects that you can take with you wherever you go.

Here it is finally – the pattern for the Dahlia Block, with complete instructions for piecing! Please note that the downloadable patterns and instruction files for the Dreamcatcher Round the…

I recently came across the new Thimble Blossoms patterns. Love. Love love love. Though it was a tough choice between Fireworks and Round & Round. But Round & Round won. Doesn’t it look divine in rainbow Color Weave?! There are a lot of HSTs in this block, and a lot of rows to sew together. So the quilt row markers Jane made me came in very handy. I used them to remind me which way to press the seams, so that I could nest them together when it was time to sew. My seams still aren’t all quite perfect, but not too shabby! Loving this block. It’s big – think mine came to 23” unfinished. But bonus of that is you don’t need too many to make a quilt! I’m not sure on the name Round and Round, so I’m going with Circle of Flowers as that’s what it reminds me of. So now to make a bunch more HSTs. Eventually. There may not be too much sewing happening here over the next few weeks as I’m moving house. So most of my WiP unfortunately will be packing boxes. Nowhere near as pretty, but most necessary. Linking up with WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

EPP block designed by me.

Can you believe this is the last but one block the DreamcatcherRound the Year Block of the Month Quilt? I was in two minds whether to include this beautiful traditional pieced block in this quilt, …

Clicking the image will open the Flickr photo. Clicking the link will take you to the associated blog post. Virtual Quilting Bee Starflake...

Circles Block #2: Sunshine Here we go again, with the second block in our slow sewing, English Paper Piecing, series of circles. While I call it Sunshine, because of the fabric I used, the officia…

Welcome to our second Round We Go Friday for 2018! I really love this mix of shapes because there’s so much possibility for making secondary shapes with them. Oh, who am I kidding you could say that a

This traditional “DAHLIA” block is the first in the Dreamcatcher Round the Year Quilt. We use bright/ neon solids and a contemporary black and white print to give it a ‘modernR…

Patterns ONLY.  NO fabric included. Sold as a complete set, NOT monthly. Round We Go Full Set Block of the Month includes 12 gorgeously packed Seed Packets each containing pattern instructions and papers, 1 design book, and 9 acrylic templates. Finished quilt size: 48in x 64in; designer recommends 58in x 74in for backing fabrics.

It's that time again. Round 8 of the pillow talk swap is in full sewing mode. Inspiration has struck, and sewing has commenced....

Lollipop Candy is the sixth of the Blocks of the Month of the ‘Dreamcatcher Round the Year’ Quilt. Like the previous blocks, this is also foundation paper and finishes at 18″ squa…

Our English paper pieced diamonds quilt along is at a whopping 81 members! Thousands of diamonds have been cut, basted & pieced. Millions of stitches have been taken! Let's take a look at the projects as they are coming along: Clare of Summerfete has been quilting! Her 2" diamonds are lovely. Carolyn has a nice big section started: Carolyn aka Laughing Duck  Traci of Stolen Moments has some good tips to share: Traci of Stolen Moments Lesly at Pickle Dish has been piecing for almost a year.. Amanda of Home Designs by Amanda is just starting, man I love the fabric selection stage! I love the fabric Teegzie is using: Teegzie's orange diamonds Audrey Pawdrey has started with some pretty funky stars. Luv2sign99 has some nice bold stars: Luv2sign99's bold stars. Nuria of La casina roja has started too, and she has the sweetest sewing box! And here's mine. I've been shooting for 2 stars a day since our Greek vacation started, but I don't always make it.. Travel Quilt #3 If you would like to see more or join us, please visit the quilt along page!!

Enjoy the sunshine and fresh air while working on a summer English paper piecing project, featuring a variety of colorful and playful designs that are perfect for creating beautiful and portable quilting projects that you can take with you wherever you go.