Blog / english paper piecing

Do you ever fall in love with a fabric line and want to use it in all of your projects? That's how I feel about Carolyn Friedlander's Architextures line, which I first saw at Quilt Market last fall. I snagged a little mini pack (2.5" squares) of the line while I was there, and finally turned it into a small quilt last month.


The top was entirely paper pieced by hand, some of which I did while...

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) is one of my favorite charities to support. The work they do to raise money for Alzheimer's research is amazing, and I have my own growing collection of quilts that I've purchased from their site over the past year and a half. I've been wanting to donate quilts to AAQI for quite some time, and last month I finally did.

English paper piecing has become my go-to project when I'm traveling, so after finishing my star blossoms quilt, I immediately switched over to a hexagon project I started ages ago, but had never finished. During plane rides this past fall to Salt Lake City for Sewing Summit and Houston for Quilt Market, I stitched away.


The main fabrics I used were hand-printed scraps by Sara Lee Parker, which I bought from her table at Crafty Bastards a few years ago. I paired her prints with an olive linen from my stash. I took an improv approach to the layout of the hexagons---I pulled basted hexagons from a pouch without looking, and stitched together whatever I pulled.

Once I'd stitched together all of the pieces I had, I decided to machine appliqué the entire shape to a rectangular scrap of muslin. I did echo quilting around the edges and then framed it all with a black binding.


I love how this piece turned out---and loved working with Sara's fabrics---and can't wait to hang it on my studio wall.

When my husband and I went to London last year, I brought along an English paper-piecing project to work on during the plane ride and down time in the city (you can see the start of it here).


In the months that followed, I continued to work on it, and this past fall, I finally finished it.


I used Rachel's Star Blossoms tutorialas my starting point, and decided to make each star monochromatic,...