English Paper Piecing Tutorial

Begin by cutting out a ton of paper hexagons. I used card stock to make my hexagons since its stiffer and easier to work with, but you really can use just any paper. Decide your size hexagon and you can google it to find a good pattern to print out. Cut a circle of fabric a little bigger than your hexagon because you will be wrapping it around the paper to sew.




place the hexagon on the wrong side of the fabric and fold the fabric over the flat edges. run a quick whip stitch over the seam to hold it in place. Conitinue doing this until you have covered all edges of your hexagon.




It should be nice and smooth and not baggy on the paper.

Sandwich two hexagons with right sides together matching flat edges. (thats Tux helping me in this photo)

Whip stitch all the way down the edge of the hexagons catching just a little bit of fabric and trying not to sew through your paper.

Once they are joined you should be able to unfold them and not see any of your stitches on the right sides.

Just keep going and joining all your little hexagons together. This is very addicting, but its a great project to take with you, since you can whip together a whole bunch of hexagons and carry them with you and stitch them together when you get bored or have down time. Also, it gets a little harder to stitch the hexagons together when you are on the last few edges, if you need to pop the paper out to make it work, go for it, its outlived its usefulness at this point, just remember to save the paper for the next hexagon you make :)

Grandmother's Garden Quilt

For my first post I thought I would show off my latest obsession, er... project. I have begun making a grandmother's garden quilt.
For those of you who have never heard of a grandmother's garden quilt, it is a quilt made up entirely of hexagons sewn together at the edges. The process used to make this quilt is called 'English paper piecing'. I will post a tutorial about how to do english paper piecing later on. (I promise!)
I started out with the goal of making a queen sized quilt for our guest bedroom, but my husband convinced me that it might be a better idea to do a smaller, baby-sized, quilt since its my first one. I will not be purchasing any fabrics for this quilt, I want to make it using only scraps and old materials. I had a few scraps lying around from previous projects, and my mom graciously allowed me to snag some old pillow cases and sheets from the house. I remember all of these fabrics from when I was a kid, so they have special memories attached.
I plan on using the pretty blue with the tiny white flowers (far left) as the filler between my hexagon flowers, and the yellow gingham as the quilt backing. I also read a super cute idea recently about binding your quilt by sandwiching two hexagons together on either side of the quilt and stitching like normal.

On that note... I will show off the few flowers I have made so far and let you admire them until I post more (ha!)
My Kitties love to help. This is Allison by the way.

I had to wrestle the hexagons away from Allison so I could take photos tonight.
Great advice from an aunt:

1. You should punch holes in your paper hexagons. Once you have sewn all 6 sides, you can insert a tool of some sort, like a crochet hook or pencil into the hole and pop the paper out.

2. Traditionally, the center of the flower is yellow. The first round (6 attached to the yellow) is of the flower color. The second round is green. Then, the flowers are hooked together, not directly, but with another hexagon, usually brown, called the garden path.


See the awesomeness I learn when I share what I know, haha :) Thanks Aunt Julie