Ring-a-Roses English Paper Piecing Pattern

The pattern for this English paper piecing design is finally available! I've chosen to name this pattern after the nursery rhyme, Ring-A-Roses, despite the urban legends linking it to the plague! To me, this design has a strong feel of circularity, both in some of the individual blocks within it, and the circle that appears at the centre when viewed from a distance. So the playground rhyme - where children would join hands and dance around in a circle - has been whirling around in my head the whole time I've been writing this pattern up.

Down to the details, my Ring-a-Roses PDF pattern comes with:

• Full-size pattern pieces that can be printed on regular printer paper
• A colouring sheet so that you can plan out your colour scheme
• Simple construction illustrations that show how best to assemble the blocks
• Helpful tips for newer EPPers 
• The pattern pieces produce a finished design that measures 17¼" x 17¼", but the pieces can easily be scaled up
• It's instantly downloadable for you to save and print out from your own computer 
• The pattern costs £6 (which is around $8.50US dollars or just under €7.50 Euros) 
• You can buy a copy, here!

I chose to fussy-cut my fabrics for this pattern (due to my slightly unhealthy fussy-cutting addiction), but I think it would look fantastic made up in solids or randomly cut patterned fabrics too. However, if you want any advice on fussy-cutting for your own version, you can find a tutorial on my blog here. 

I chose to frame my version of Ring-a-Roses, but it's an easy-to-adapt pattern. You could add a border and make a cushion, super-size the pattern pieces and make a large, square quilt or, as the pattern pieces tessellate, you could easily continue the design to make something bigger and more elaborate. However, if you're looking for something that won't take you too long to finish, this size is perfect. 

Because the design is slightly more involved than basic hexagons and has some quite tiny pieces, it's aimed at people who already have one small EPP project up their sleeve (or more likely, on their bed or holding their pins in cushion-form), so I haven't included instructions as to how to do things like the standard EPP whip-stitch which you would have almost certainly mastered during your first project, because that felt like it would be a waste of your printer ink. However, because English paper piecing is a relatively easy skill to learn, I am assuming that relative newcomers may want to give this pattern a try, so I have included brief details about my favourite needles and threads, different methods of basting and other information that I thought might be more useful.

Buy the Pattern!

If you buy the pattern, I would love to see how you get on with it, so please do feel free to tag a photo with #RingARosesEPP on Twitter or Instagram or email me a photo at flossieteacakes (at) gmail (dot) com.

Florence x

Ps. If you're looking to read more around EPP, you can find a post on fussy-cutting here; a post on the best threads for EPP here; a guide to framing your work here; or a post written for complete beginners when I myself was one too, here (note, I tend to use good quality paper, rather than card now!).