English paper piecing: where to begin

This week two people (one of whom was Kate, so expect to see goodies from her in the near future!) wrote to me about English paper piecing (EPP) asking for some quick-start tips about where to begin, so I thought I may write a whole post about it. The summer holidays are here and EPP is a deliciously sociable and portable way to fit in some sewing while still spending time with family and friends. I'm relatively new to English paper piecing, but my learning curve has been made shorter and less painful by the kindness of people like Ruth, Katy, Lynne and Kerry, so I hope that they won't mind that some of their guidance is bound up within this post and being passed on. I write not as an expert, but someone who is relatively new to this and so remembers all the tiny things I had questions about myself.

What is English Paper Piecing?

English paper piecing is basically the process of wrapping fabric around paper to make crisply formed shapes to be sewn together by hand. Once sewn, the papers can be removed and a beautifully pieced patchwork is left from which to make cushions, quilts or anything else you can think of. Because it's hand sewn it is more fragile than patchwork produced on a machine, but with that fragility comes beauty and an intrinsic look of love and care apparent within the tiny just-visible stitches.

Fabric Choice

Fabric choice is important. Ruth talked to me about certain fabrics 'needling better'. Because of the open weave of a quilting cotton your needle is able to enter the fabric easily making it a perfect choice for EPP. Ruth said Liberty Tana Lawn (which I used in the cushion seen in some of the photos) was the rare alternative fabric that she'd found to quilting cotton that is also relatively easy to needle.

Having now worked with both, I'd say that quilting cotton definitely has the edge and the needle travels in and out with noticeable ease making your work faster, but the Tana Lawn is so beautiful that the results are definitely worth pursuing and I'll happily choose to use it again

Patterns or doing your own thing

This is my Eight Dials pattern. 

If you want to follow a pattern, then I now have several patterns in my sidebar on the left (although obviously I didn't at the time when I originally wrote this post). However, if you want to do your own thing, this is a really easy option with EPP - you can download hexagons, squares, diamonds at triangles at Incompetech. It's up to you to decide on scale - you can paper piece with shapes as small or as big as you like. To give you an idea, 1" pieces are displayed in many of the projects seen in this post - these are slow but enjoyable to piece together: a more quickly-finished project may use pieces of 2.5".

With English paper piecing it's also easy to freestyle and create your own patterns...you can just cut out shapes and see how they look and fit together. Please excuse these gloomy photographs - I hadn't intended to share them here, so I was making no attempt to photograph them nicely at the time.

Paper Choice

Paper choice: you can buy pre-cut papers for your project (they're widely available from quilting shops, but Sew & Quilt has a good selection) or you can print them out on your own paper at home to save money. I chose to do the latter and found that using a relatively sturdy paper of about 120gsm has meant that I can use the papers several times over and it's thick enough to easily follow the outline of the shape when basting fabrics to it. Because you'll keep the papers in place until large sections have been pieced together, you'll need many, many paper pieces. Be prepared to spend a while cutting paper and, for new sewists, remember never to use your fabric scissors or rotary cutter on paper as it will blunt them horribly.

Creating shape templates

If you're using one of my patterns then you can ignore this bit, but if you're buying or printing paper shapes, read on. When EPP quilters talk about the size of a paper piece they generally refer to the length of one of the sides of the shape and not its diameter. So if I use 1" hexagons, then the length of the each side of the hexagon will measure 1".

When you're choosing sizes for EPP you don't need to think about seam allowances - those pieces of paper will slot together and butt up against one another exactly as they are. So obviously that means that if, as I did for my cushion where I chose to put 6-point stars made from diamonds interspersed with hexagons, then the edges of both the diamonds and hexagons used would both need to measure the same length for them to butt up to one another perfectly. Once you've printed your shapes, cutting with accuracy is really important - it will affect the ease with which you piece together your shapes.

Making the template for cutting fabrics

So, the paper pieces you've just cut will go inside your fabric, but your fabric needs to be cut a little bigger so as to wrap around the shape. You'll need to create one larger template from which to cut your fabrics. I use clear plastic to make my template - this means you can use it with a rotary cutter more easily and also see through it better if you wish to place part of the fabric's design in the centre of your shape (this is called fussy cutting). However, if you don't have any template plastic to hand, you can just as easily use a sturdy bit of card.

To make the template, simply make one of your paper pieces 1/4" bigger on all sides. You can happily use a ruler to do this, although if you have an acrylic grid ruler it's even easier. Use this single template to cut your fabric from.

Cutting the fabrics

You can use scissors or a rotary cutter to cut your shapes. Unless you're fussy cutting fabric, you can cut many at time. With a fresh blade, my rotary cutter will happily make it's way through six hexagons at a time, making quick work of cutting hundreds of hexagons.

Basting the fabrics around the papers

Before you can begin sewing shapes together, you'll need to secure the fabrics to the paper shapes. To do this you can either use large basting stitches (front view, back view) which can be removed afterwards or you can use fabric glue. I use Sewline fabric glue which Kerry recommended to me, as it's a quick option that allows you to get on with the fun of sewing proper.

However, some people (such as Katy) feel that basting is actually part of the fun of the slow, meditative process that is EPP, so don't discount it just because it takes longer. It's also better in certain situations. On a rare, hot day I took my EPP outside and found that in the intensity of the sun my glue began to melt and a few of my papers fell out before I hastily retreated inside, so if you're taking your sewing with you on holiday you may wish to think about this.

Wrapping the fabric around the paper

To wrap the fabric around the paper, place a paper template in the centre on the wrong side of your fabric shape. Then neatly fold the edges inward. When I'm glue basting a hexagon I tend to glue one side and then glue its opposite side, until all are stuck down, whereas if I'm thread basting I tend to work around the shape one side at a time.

A hexagon is an easy shape to create - all sides are simply stuck down. Whereas when covering the diamonds to be used in my 6-point stars, Katy memorably told me to 'let the dog's ears wag' meaning that I should leave the ears of the fabric unstuck.

Thinking about thread

I use either Superior Threads Bottom Line thread or Wonderfil's DecoBobs. Both a incredibly fine and strong. I've written much more about threads for EPP, here - do go and have a read.

Thinking about needles

In my hurry to begin I started piecing with a regular hand-sewing needle. However, I've since written at great length about needle choice, here.

Types of stitches

You should use a whip stitch for EPP (I've tried a ladder stitch and found it wasn't strong enough). You can find many tutorials on YouTube if you're not sure of how to do it.

When I first started EPP I became slightly obsessed with how many stitches per inch one should be making 'to do things properly'. Actually, there is no 'properly' and it's all about personal preference and what feels good to you. But just in case there are any control freaks out there who, like me, still want a rough guide, I use about 20 - 25 stitches per inch. I now think this is at the higher end of what's necessary and I know others who use about 15 per inch and their piecing is perfectly sturdy.

How to sew it together

To sew, simply place the wrapped pieces face-to-face and stitch along the edge, stitching through the fabric that runs along the edge of the paper piece, being careful not to sew through the paper itself. It's careful work and the more care you take the less visible your stitches will be. However, it's also meant to be relaxing and enjoyable and when I went to the quilting exhibition at the V&A museum a few years ago one of the things that made me feel slightly weepy was seeing the visible, fragile stitches; the imperfections; and the sign of human hand within the stunning quilts - so don't ruin your enjoyment striving for perfection - English paper piecing creates work with an heirloom feel where there's little wrong with leaving tiny traces of your own presence.

If you're not following a pattern, where it will advise you on this, bear in mind that it's easier for you to avoid having to sew together deep 'v' seams. Often, you can avoid them simply by breaking your work into oddly shaped sections that keep the seam lines to be sewn relatively gentle (this will only make sense once you begin working on larger areas, so don't feel stressed if you can't comprehend quite what I'm saying here).

If you feel stuck with how to piece two shapes together, butt them up against one another in the way you wish for them to look and work backwards. Often you'll sew one seam and then twist it into another place to sew the other side of the shape - you don't need to tackle both sides at the same time (as you often would when you're working on a machine, pinning everything into place beforehand. In fact no pins are needed - you can hold it in place with your fingers as you sew). Know that you can bend and gently fold your shapes and sometimes this will be necessary to be able to sew the seam needed.

Clever tricks

Ruth (who, as well as creating her own lovely work, is also a technical editor on many of Kaffe Fassett's books) has kindly passed on many clever tricks while I've been beginning my adventure with EPP and I hope that she won't mind me sharing some of her insight here. As a new English paper piecer, when it came to sewing diamonds together to make the star below, I began by stitching each diamond together in turn. This meant that by the time I reached the sixth diamond I had a deep 'V' seam to negotiate (I don't actually mind these, but it's easier if you don't have to tackle them) and it also meant that I was left with a very tiny, but irksome, hole at the centre of the star.

Ruth showed me that by assembling the star first as two halves, using three diamonds on each side, I could avoid the deep 'V' seam and simply place the two halves of the star together and join them sewing along one straight, easy-to-sew seam running across the centre of the star, eliminating that irksome hole that formed in the middle.

Not only was this an invaluable trick, it also taught me a lot about English paper piecing in general. That is, to look for the way of piecing things together which keeps the seam lines simple, even though it may not feel intuitive at first sight.

Storage

You'll quickly find that you need somewhere to store it all. I don't like tins as they're hard to store and rattle in my handbag, but if I'm piecing in the garden then I do put everything in a tin to prevent it from blowing away.

However, most of the time it's stored in a series of small bags and if certain fabrics have been paired with one another then I hold them together with paper clips.

I'm currently working on making something to store it all in that will slot into my handbag easily and keep all the different bits of paraphernalia and different stages of piecing in contained areas.

Removing the papers

Don't remove a paper until it has something surrounding it on all sides - the papers are there because it makes it easy to sew a seam together. When it comes to removing them, simply take out your basting stitches and gently pull the paper out, or if you've used glue, you can ease the papers out by warming the glue with an iron. Either way, they tend to come out easily and without damaging your work.

Over to the experts

These are my thoughts as a beginner. I know from some of my regular readers' responses to previous posts about my own adventures with English Paper Piecing that many of you are long-time paper piecers, so if you have your own tips and tricks or links to tutorials and techniques that you think may be useful or could expand on this, then please do share them in the comments.

I've always loathed the expression about skinning cats, so will just say that I love that there's more than one way to peel a satsuma and I'd love to hear about ways other that my own and Kate and other EPP newcomers may too.

Florence x

Ps. I'm really sorry to write one post before responding to the comments to the last - totally the wrong way around, especially when they were so very lovely. I will reply as soon I'm home this evening and thank you for all your kindness - which was so much appreciated. xxxx...xxx...xx...x