A block with so much potential. Change the colors and it can work for any season. I envisioned a Christmas Cactus when I put mine together.
Check out this weeks podcast for more adventures in fiber and fabric. This week I visited a fiber festival and brought home just a bit of fleece.
What’s it name? This week’s English Paper Piecing block may be traditionally called The Spool, but in my world the spool of thread and the bobbin of wool compete for dominance. Whatever you choose to call it, this block pattern adds a bit of a spin on the standard block pattern.
Plus more inspiration in this week’s podcast.
English Paper Piecing dominates my days, especially since there are so many seasonal inspirations simply begging to become EPP projects. This week I am sharing two blocks for my ongoing EPP quilt project, plus a quilt pattern I’ve named Ghosts & Lanterns.
In addition to these EPP projects, I share more seasonal projects in this week’s podcast. With autumn breezes finally cooling the air, I have returned to my sewing room with excitement. In fact, that is were I am off to now.
Happy Unwinding with Fiber and Fabric💜
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Important Note: This is an untested set of basic schematics for this quilt rather than instructions.
One of the most iconic quilts of the 20th century is the Granma’s Flower Garden. Made from hexagons combined to create the appearance of flower petals, this design has been created with one unit – the hexagon. The concept and design has also appeared in crochet, with the hexagon replacing the more common Granny Square. Whether sewn or crocheted, the look is memorable and inviting.
Putting a spin on the more common block, the Hexagon Pinwheel adds the twist of piecing together the center hexagon before building the floret. I have added one additional twist and placed the floret into a pieced block. As with other similar designs, it would be easy to simply applique the floret onto a solid background, but I have chosen to challenge myself. It would be perfectly acceptable for others to bypass this challenge. There would be nothing wrong with cutting an 11 inch square of fabric, applying the constructed floret, and then trimming the block to 10.5 inches. Sometimes, one twist in a project is more than enough.
The first block in a series of paper pieced blocks I plan to make (and share) over the next few months. I have a rough plan for a sampler quilt drafted in my quilting software*. For the blocks, I plan to use a combination of vintage fabrics I have collected over the years, hand dyed fabrics I created early in my dyeing exploration, and some unbleached muslin I have in abundance. I will decide on sashing fabric once all the blocks are constructed.
Each of my blocks will finish as 10″ blocks (including the cream borders). I am hand sewing each of the blocks, but will likely construct the quilt top by machine once I reach that point of the process. Many of the blocks are variations of traditional blocks. In most cases, the major modification was to set them into the block borders.
While most of these blocks could be constructed using other methods than English Paper Piecing (EPP), the scale of the blocks makes EPP the best choice. I will provide a pdf with fabric recommendations and template sheets. The template sheets have been arranged for ease of printing directly onto cardstock.
I share the Evening Star block in the second half of today’s podcast.
Inspired by an younger generation of quilters and an ever-growing scrap fabric stash, I decided to give English Paper Piecing (EPP) a try. I quickly fell in love with the rhythmic quality of sewing small pieces of fabric together. The secret to my success has been to use thick cardboard rather than paper for my template pieces. Since I am glue basting the fabric to the templates, the thickness is not a problem but instead provides me with something more substantial on which to hold. I will admit, having the ability to laser cut out all my templates is a huge help. While I certainly could have just purchased pre-cut shapes and worked on patterns from those shapes, I decided to give myself the challenge of designing blocks in computer software so that I could share what I was doing with others.
Harvest Berries is the first of the EPP blocks I plan to share over the next year. I chose it to be first because it is built on one of the most beloved EPP shapes – the hexagon. I chose to applique this block onto a solid background rather than to combine it with many others to make a hexagon quilt. While I used 1.5″ (side measurement) hexagons although any size hexagon could work for this pattern. I have provided a pdf with the templates, but precut hexagons can be purchased from many sites.
Harvest Berries was a fun block to make, and it is a great pattern to introduce a beginner to the world of EPP.
Pithy Ponderings 