English Paper Piecing My Way

You probably know about English paper piecing. It’s a way to use hand stitching to create very precise patterns. Each piece of fabric is first stitched around paper or cardboard. Later, the shapes are stitched to one another and, finally, the paper is removed. (Check out You Tube for a PLETHORA of different ways to do the stitching.)

Years ago I decided I needed a hand sewing project, so I made a bunch of 1″ hexagons. Or “hexies” as they’re called in English Paper Piecing (EPP) lingo. Mine are the 1″ size, which is the length of each side.

Any EPP purist would probably gasp if they looked closely at the image above. It clearly shows that I’ve used machine stitching to join my hexies. NOT the norm! But, more about that in a minute.

As I said, I already had a bunch of hexies, so when Linda Kemshall, of DesignMattersTV.com talked about making them, I got reinspired.

This shows a bunch of hexies ready to be stitchied. My card stock templates have a hole in the middle which serves two purposes. 1 – it givse me a way to secure the fabric to the template, with pins. 2 – it makes it easier to remove the template later because I can pop a pencil in there and easily pry it out.

After hand stitching and ironing the hexies, they look like this. The ironing is done with the template still in place. Aren’t they lovely?

This is what they look like from the back. Apparently, you’re not supposed to remove the templates before joining them to adjacent pieces. But, I didn’t know that.

I tried hand stitching them to one another and I was NOT good at it! My stitches were quite visible from the front. (Would those templates have helped here, I wonder?) Since I wasn’t too keen on that much hand stitching anyway, I decided I could sew them to a muslin backing and use a clear thread and a zigzag stitch to attach them. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

I’m really loving the effect of these gently undulating colors. I don’t have a color scheme in mind, although I seem to be leaning toward orange. I will pay attention to brightness, however, and use fabrics that aren’t too loud.

I expect this to be an ongoing pick-it-up-when-I-want-something-portable type of project, rather than something I complete all at once. At any rate, I’m having fun.

This link shows how I make my hexies.

What’s your favorite portable project?

Ellen Lindner
P.S. YouTube has a ton of other videos about making  and joining hexies.
P.P.S. Update: when searching for similar posts I found one showing that I had used this same method before. That link is below.