Patchwork Progressing Faster Than Home Renovations

Good Morning and Happy Wednesday, my lovelies!  I'll answer your top questions right off the bat:

1. YES, I'm still here.
2. NO, our home renovations aren't finished yet.
3. YES, I'm still sewing.
4. NO, I don't have much to show for it, though!

I'm still mostly on a break from the delightful-yet-challenging-and-tedious Stonefields sampler quilt, in that I haven't mustered up the creative energy to start prepping the next applique blocks.  I am, however, still stitching up hexagon rosettes for the outer border in the evenings.  Here's one of the latest finished rosettes:

No. 41 of 168 Rosettes Needed for Stonefields Outer Border

I've sewn 41 of the 168 hexagon rosettes for the Stonefields outer border so far, so I'm nearly 25% finished.  Slow going for sure, but I'm getting better at English paper piecing through the repetition and I don't need to think about what I'm doing nearly so much now as I did in the beginning, so it's perfect for keeping fidgety fingers busy in front of the television in the evenings.

Meanwhile, I've been making 9" 9-patch and 4-patch variations for that quilt based on Scrappy Celebrations.  When I abandoned this WIP (Work In Progress) over a year ago, I was feeling like it was burning up too much "good fabric" on a not-very-exciting project.  Now that I've been wasting investing such enormous amounts of time but very little fabric into each of those fiddly Stonefields blocks, it actually feels GOOD to burn up a little more yardage with simpler blocks that go together so much faster.  As in, six of these Scrappy Celebration blocks completed in a single day, compared to two or three weeks to complete just one or two of some of the more complex Stonefields blocks.  The projects balance one another out.  

Here are the completed Scrappy Celebration blocks on the design wall today:

37 Completed Scrappy Celebration Blocks (Out of ??)

I also have the next five blocks in progress at the sewing machine for chain piecing.  And yes, I am aware that I could have sped this up by strip piecing the 3" 9-patch units but I hate pressing strips open and didn't feel like doing the math to figure out how many strips to cut, etc.  

Quilt Decor, Stonefields Paper Flowers Appliqué Prep + Hexie Basting Preferences

I have a happy little snippet of renovation progress to share today!  Behold, my in-progress laundry room.  Can you tell a quilter lives here?

Limestone Mosaic Installed Over Laundry Sink

From a distance you might think it's wallpaper, but it's a honed limestone mosaic tile.  It was a splurge but I was helpless to resist (and my husband was foolish enough to send me to the tile showroom unsupervised).  The tile crew installed this on Thursday and it still needs to be grouted.  That brown paper is covering up and protecting my soapstone counter (same color as the dark gray/black squares in the mosaic) and a laundry sink directly beneath the window.  The window trim is only primed right now; it will be painted the same color as the crown molding and the cabinets once the tile installation is complete.  The painters also taped plastic over the window glass.

The tile installers pointed out to me ahead of time that the mosaic pieces are imperfectly cut and the points don't all meet up precisely, but I knew that already from the sample board in the showroom.  Surprisingly, this doesn't bother me -- it's kind of like an old patchwork quilt made out of stone.  I will see this mosaic wall every time I come into my house through the garage and it will make me smile.  💗

 

Imperfections Up Close, Mosaic Installed But Not Grouted

The installers planned and laid out the whole wall on the floor before they started installing.  

A Colonoscopy Quilting Bee For One

In case you were wondering how many hexagon rosettes Rebecca can stitch together in the time it takes a skilled gastroenterologist to perform a routine colonoscopy, the answer is ONE.  Behold, the fruits of my labors:

The Cuteness of the Bunny Rabbit Hexie Rosette!

I will not be sharing the photos of what the GE surgeon accomplished whilst I was stitching, as that would be gross.  😉

I suppose I should clarify that I was not the patient on the receiving end of today's colonoscopy.  I was the wife and designated driver of the patient, forced to endure 3 dreary hours in the hospital waiting room without benefit of any of the fun party drugs they gave to Bernie for his "procedure."  I estimate that it took me somewhere between 1 1/2 to 2 hours to stitch up my bunny rabbit surrounded by stars, and this activity put me in much better spirits than I was in after getting lost in the parking deck and struggling to find my way to the Endoscopy department of the hospital after dropping Bernie off at the front door.  Fun times.  Had I not brought a hand sewing project, I might have bit someone's head off.  Sewing really is a win for everyone.

My collection of hexagon rosettes is growing!  Fourteen completed, 154 more needing to be made.  I keep saying that I should get back to making the blocks for this quilt (or clean the bathroom, or start getting the tax documents ready for our accountant).  And then I decide that I shall definitely do all of those important things... Right after I make just one more cute little rosette.

14 Finished Hexie Rosettes!  154 More to Go

In other news, there is a quilt on my long arm frame.  It is a 2024 temperature quilt top made by one of my favorite clients, and it was impeccably pieced but it has been giving me some grief and forcing me to spend more alone time with my seam ripper than I would like.  😬. 

Spiral Quilting on Carrie's Temperature Quilt

I am experiencing thread breaks and shredding when the quilting direction is traveling up and towards the back left corner of the frame.  I have tried all of the usual remedies, like new needle, larger needle, different type of needle, tension adjustments, looser tension on the quilt sandwich, silicone thread lubricant, changing to a different thread (hence four days of ripping out the first row of quilting using the other thread).  Then today I thought to have Bernie check the positioning of the leveling "dead bar" -- that's the bar in the photo above with the tape measure attached -- and it was mounted too high, but even after adjusting it my thread shredding issues persist.  Super annoying.  It's possible something needs tweaking with my longarm frame after transporting and reassembling it after the move, but when I had issues like this several years ago it was caused by a burr (tiny scratch) on my machine's hook and I needed my Bernina dealer to diagnose that and buff it out for me.  

Happy Valentine's Day! I Love You More...

Happy Valentine's Day!  Y'all, I have been holding onto photos of this quilt for over a year because I wanted to use it for a timely Valentine's Day post, and then I forgot all about it last Valentine's Day.  Then I forgot about it again this year, until I was drinking my coffee this morning and realized that Valentine's Day is already NOW.  No time like the present, no day like today, and here we go --

My friend Marybeth made this sweet 36" x 36" Valentine's Day table topper quilt and I quilted it for her in September of 2024 using Karlee Porter's "I Love You More" edge-to-edge quilting design to really lean into the holiday theme and make the quilt feel like a Valentine.

36 x 36 Valentine's Day Table Topper Quilt Made by Marybeth, Quilted by Moi

This is one of those quilting designs that looks scary busy when you're looking at a black and white line drawing of the design, but as you can see here, the quilting can still be quite subtle if you use the right thread.  I used one of my favorite "supporting actress" quilting threads here, So Fine 50 wt matte polyester thread in color Blizzard from Superior Threads (this blog post contains affiliate links).  Notice in the photo below that even though Blizzard is a bright white matched to Marybeth's white background fabric, the thinness of So Fine thread causes the stitching to "take on" a lot of the color from the other fabrics.  So on those pink triangle patches, the white thread looks like it's the exact same shade of pink, and even where the white thread crosses dark red fabric, the contrast isn't drastic because the white thread looks more pink there than pure white.  

So Fine Thread Disappears Into the Fabrics

So Fine is a matte (not shiny) polyester thread that resembles cotton.  In fact, in lighter colors, the look of So Fine is indistinguishable from cotton in my opinion.  However, polyester is a lot stronger than cotton thread of a comparable weight would be, so even though this is a very fine, skinny thread, it's still plenty strong even for quilts that will be heavily used and frequently laundered.  These qualities would also make So Fine thread a great choice for English paper piecing or for hand or machine appliqué projects.  

Rosettes for Stonefields Quilt Border + Ongoing Experiments with English Paper Piecing

Happy Slow Stitching Sunday!  You guys, I have finally been sewing again for the first time since moving back to North Carolina!  I had so much fun making the tiny 3/8" hexie rosettes for Stonefields Quilt blocks #14 & 15 back in September, so I decided that making a few of the 168 larger 3/4" hexie rosettes that I will need for my border might be a good task to ease myself out of my stitching slump.  It turned out to be the perfect choice.  As Tula Pink says, you have to eat your elephant one little bite at a time.

3 Rosettes Completed, 165 More Needed for Stonefields Quilt Border

I would have finished more than three of these, but I spent about two hours ransacking my studio closets, bins and drawers searching for my All Points Patchwork: English Paper Piecing Beyond the Hexagon... book by Diane Gilleland.  (This post contains affiliate links).  To my supreme irritation, I never did find it.  I was also unable to locate my little black and gold pack of John James size 12 Milliners needles, even though I swear I remember finding them mixed in with unrelated supplies when I was unpacking.  Where, oh where did I put those needles?  Before I moved, I could put my hands on just about any book, tool or notion in less than 5 minutes.  A place for everything and everything in its place and all that.  Well, I caved and ordered more needles on Amazon, but I did not buy another copy of the book as it's sure to turn up sooner or later.

My Stonefields Quilt (pattern by Susan Smith is getting harder to find, but there is still one copy available on Etsy here) was purchased from a quilt shop and came kitted with the necessary EPP template papers for 3/4" hexagons.  I can't remember whether this nifty windowed acrylic template for fussy cutting came with the kit as well, or if I purchased it separately from Paper Pieces.  For hexies that I wanted to cut from stripes or centering specific printed motifs from my fabric, I traced around the template with a mechanical pencil and sandpaper beneath the fabric, then cut the hexies out individually with scissors.

Tracing Acrylic Template Prior to Cutting Hexies With Scissors

These flowers from my Tilda fabric were cut in the same way, centering the template window on the flowers and tracing around them one by one with pencil, then cutting out each shape with scissors.  So much fun!  But OH SO SLOW...

More Fussy Cutting With Window Template

There was a silver lining to the chaos in my studio and the missing EPP book, because after wasting two hours looking for things I never found, I wasted invested a couple more hours going down a rabbit hole of YouTube English Paper Piecing tutorials, trying to find the method I used successfully for the smaller hexie rosettes I made four months ago.  Remember that I am an EPP newbie, and making two of something is not enough repetition to ingrain everything indelibly in my brain.  

Stonefields Blocks 14 & 15: Bordered 3/8" Hexagons

Hello, hello, HELLO, my Lovelies!  Look what I made yesterday and today, instead of packing or working on quilting my Deco quilt!  Behold, the Adorable and Delicious Little Bordered 3/8" Hexagon Blocks for my Stonefields sampler quilt project!  I had so much fun making these blocks!  (This post contains affiliate links).

6" Finished Stonefields Blocks 14 & 15: Bordered 3/8 in. Hexagons

The directions in the Stonefields Quilt pattern by Susan Smith are sparse, which is fine by me as I have difficulty following instructions anyway.  The pattern designer assumes everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is stitched by hand.  That's fine if Methuselah is making this quilt, but those of us whose life expectancy is less than 900 years need to make peace with compromises from time to time.  I enjoy hand stitching but I am really, REALLY slow at it, so I'm mixing in machine work where it makes sense to me to do so.

For instance, why would I hand piece this square in a square block background when it is so easy to foundation paper piece this block and I can print my foundation paper patterns right from my EQ8 software to whatever size I need them to be?

Foundation Paper Pieced Background

I rough cut all my patches before FPP stitching and lay them out next to my machine.  Those fabrics in the lower left corner of the above photo are the ones I've selected for the hexie rosette that will be appliquéd to the center of this block later.

 6" Finished Block Background Ready for Hexie Rosette

And now, for the rascally little EPP hexies!  This was my first ever experience making EPP hexies.  Five years ago, I sewed an EPP monogram letter C block for a baby quilt (read about that here) and in August of 2016 I made unsuccessful experiments combining both FPP (foundation paper piecing) and EPP (English paper piecing) methods to piece a tricky block from the Farmer's Wife Sampler book (read about that here).  

Well, I've got more experience and better skills now than I had back then, and this time around I'm a lot happier with my results.  

Thread Basted 3/8 in. Hexies

Notes to Self (and to Other Interested Parties):

• I'm using commercially made hexagon templates with 3/8" sides.  They came in an optional kit that I purchased with my pattern.
• After reading a blog post from the Brimfield Awakening EPP gurus where they experimented with different stitching methods and threads, I decided to thread baste my hexies using 50/3 cotton Guttermann thread and a size 10 milliners needle, but switched to 100 wt polyester Microquilter thread with a size 11 milliners needle to whipstitch the edges of my hexies together.  Microquilter from my long arm quilting thread stash was the closest thing I had to the 100 wt poly Invisafil thread that Brimfield Awakenings recommended.

Whipstitching With 100 wt Microquilter + Size 11 Milliners Needle

Even in the ultra-fine, thinnest weight available, so skinny that you can't see the stitches as you're making them, 100 wt polyester still has the strength of 50 wt or even 40 wt cotton thread.  I wish I'd known this for my previous EPP attempts!  The thread really does make a huge difference.

Whipstitched Seam in 100 wt Microquilter Thread

See?

Zoomed WAY In to See the Stitches

And here that seam is from the right side, again, this is a zoomed-in photo which is why the fabric weave looks like a waffle.

Same Seam, Right Side

I needed just one Wonder Clip to hold things securely positioned while I was hand stitching.  I made my first hexie rosette by attaching all six outer ones to the center first, then stitching the outer hexies together one short seam at a time.  On this second rosette I tried attaching each outer hexie completely, in an "L" seam, and preferred doing it that way.

Wonder Clip Love

Here's my completed hexie rosette.  I really have absolutely no idea how long it took me to make this little cutie because I was zoned out in my Happy Place, giggling and smiling like a fool and paying no attention to the sun's travels across the sky...

HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!!!  😍

And then all of a sudden it was four o'clock in the afternoon and I was wondering where on Earth did my day go, and what about all of those other things on my To Do list!!  Having reprogrammed and saved my own personal preferred invisible appliqué stitch on my Bernina B990 sewing machine (read about that here), I decided that I'd spent enough hand stitching hours on each of these tiny hexie rosettes and gave myself permission to appliqué them to their respective block backgrounds by machine.

Invisible Machine Applique on My Bernina B990

More Notes to Self:

• I gave each hexie rosette a good starching and pressing before and after removing the template papers.  Then I used tiny dots of Roxanne's Glue Baste It to secure them in position on my block backgrounds.  The starch and the extremely narrow width of my appliqué stitch precluded the need for any stabilizer during machine stitching
• I used invisible monofilament thread in a size 60/8 Microtex needle, with Microquilter in my bobbin
• I used my open toe presser foot #20D and turned on the B990's laser feature, which shines a dot of red light precisely in the location of the next needle penetration.  That made it really easy to ensure that every stitch landed exactly where I needed it as I navigated around the perimeter of the rosettes
• I did not use my machine's auto securing or auto trim features.  Instead I held onto my thread tails at the beginning, ended stitching at the exact point where I'd begun, threaded the tails into a hand needle and pulled them to the back of the work to tie off

Tra-la-la-la-laaaaaaa!  

So, what do y'all think?  Is this sacrilege?  Hand sewn EPP hexagon rosettes machine appliqué to the block!  I should note that it IS possible to sew EPP with the sewing machine; I hunted down and watched several different methods of doing so on YouTube.  I decided that either the results shown in the tutorials didn't meet my personal standards, or that the machine  methods looked too fiddly to bother with.  Not that I wouldn't try them ever, on some other project, perhaps one where I was working with larger patches.  

Machine appliqueing the rosettes to my backgrounds made sense because I am really, REALLY pleased with how closely my new machine applique stitch resembles my hand stitching, doing this step by machine prevented any fraying of my already-to-exact-size background block due to scrunching and handling the block during hand applique stitching, and I felt I had invested my hand stitching time into the aspect of the block where I got the biggest payoff for those efforts.

How Do I Love My Sewing Machine?  Let Me Count the Ways...

Side note about how that laser feature works on the B990, because the marketing materials do a terrible job of explaining why anyone would want this for reasons other than machine embroidery.  I stopped my machine with the needle in the down position for the photo above, which is why you don't see any red dot of light on the work.  When the laser light is turned on, each time the machine's needle goes to the UP position, it shines that red dot of light onto the next place where the needle is going to go DOWN, and that helps ensure that the needle is landing in the background fabric for the straight stitches and biting just barely into a thread or two of the appliqué fabric at each swing "bite" zigzag stitch.  You can also tell as you're approaching an inside or outside corner exactly when to pivot your work.  No more guessing and getting that "almost right!"  

Backing Trimmed Away

Not sure whether it was all the starch I used to ensure my hexie rosettes held their shape after template removal, but it felt like there was a lot of bulk at the center of these finished blocks so I trimmed the background fabric away behind each rosette.  Remember that these are 3/8" hexies with 1/4" seam allowances so each one is already two to three layers thick.  Not sure whether this is a "done thing" with English Paper Piecing but it's "done NOW!"

Here are all of my completed Stonefields blocks on my design wall together:

Stonefields Completed Blocks 1-15

Two things: the blocks I finished today may look "out of place" with the others from a value perspective, but I'm not worried.  They will be fine once they are joined by other blocks that have more "stage presence."  Second, most of those appliqué blocks still have oversized backgrounds.  Part of me thinks I ought to wait to trim them down until I'm ready to assemble the blocks into a finished quilt.  Sometimes I think maybe I should wash the blocks to remove the starch and basting glue, and then trim them down.  And then another part of me thinks I ought to trim them down RIGHT NOW because it's harder to get a sense of how the whole quilt is taking shape when some of my blocks are 6 1/2" and other blocks have excess fabric around the edges.  Anyone have any advice?  When I take all of the blocks off my design wall for my upcoming move, I'll be storing them neatly in a project box and I don't think they are going to ravel and fray no matter what I do.  Also, it would be stressful and unpleasant to have to trim down ALL the appliqué blocks near the end of the project.

Alright, enough about this for today. Gosh, I don't even know what day it is.  Wednesday?  Thursday?  I need to get back to the stitch in the ditch quilting on my Deco quilt again tomorrow for sure!

I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

• MONDAY

  Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

  Monday Musings at Songbird Designs  

  TUESDAY

  To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt  

  WEDNESDAY

  Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

  THURSDAY

  Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

  FRIDAY

  Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

  Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

  Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

   TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday

  SUNDAY

  Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

  Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

  Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Nanette's Brinton Hall Quilt + Charlotte Quilters Guild Happenings

Hello, Happy February, and Happy Belated Valentine's Day!  The quilt I'm sharing today was meticulously pieced by my client Nanette of Do It Right Quilter and you can read about her journey making Brinton Hall on her quilting blog here.  Check out the fabulous English paper pieced central portion of the quilt, featuring larger scale Asian floral print fabrics framed by hand stitched hexagons in glowing batik fabrics:

Detail of Baptist Fan Quilting on Nanette's Brinton Hall Quilt

The Brinton Hall Quilt is a pattern by Leigh Latimore that is based on an historic antique quilt made by Anna Brereton between 1803-1805.  Patterns for making the quilt were published in Quiltmania magazine issues #107 and #108 in 2015, and you can still purchase those back issues (either digital or print versions) from Quiltmania's web site here if you're interested in making your own version of Brinton Hall.  This is one of those quilts that can take on radically different personalities depending on the fabric prints and color palette selections.  Doesn't this look like a FUN project?  This is one of the chief dangers of professional long arm quilting -- I keep getting all of these gorgeous quilts from my clients and I think I wanna make THIS one and THIS one and THIS one..  😍

Nanette's 77 x 77 Brinton Hall Quilt with Baptist Fan Quilting

So, let's talk about the quilting!  

Nearly Completed EPP Monogram Block + Backing, Binding Fabrics Selected for Welcome Home, Baby Quilt

You guys, as soon as this pandemic is over and the quilt shows start up again, I need to sign up for an in-person English Paper Piecing (EPP) class.  I am happy with how my EPP monogram block came out, but I'm pretty sure it should not have taken me this long to sew just the one block:

EPP Monogram Stitched and Trimmed

That's what I miss most about live-taught classes -- the individual feedback you get from the instructor looking at your work up close and saying things like "When your stitches get that small, you're not sewing anymore.  You're WEAVING!"  But, not having anyone to show me how small EPP stitches need to be in order for the seams to be tight and secure, and knowing this is going into a baby quilt that will hopefully be used heavily and laundered repeatedly, I erred on the side of too many tiny stitches rather than risk too few stitches spaced too far apart.

6.25 x 6.25 Monogram Block Center, EPP Completed

Those hand stitched seams are about eight times stronger than my machine pieced seams.  Overkill, but glad it's done!  So, after I finished all of the EPP, I pressed the block from the front and back and let it cool before pulling out the card stock templates from each patch.  They came out very easily despite the swipe of glue stick I used to adhere them to my fabric patches prior to basting the edges.  I tried two different ways of thread basting, by the way.  I started out not basting through my card stock templates at all, just tacking the seam allowances at the corners of each patch without stitching through to the front of the work at all.  If I was making a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt with thousands of 1 1/2" hexies, that method would be a great time saver as there's no need to go back and remove basting threads at all if they don't show on the front of the work.  But I felt like my longer trapezoid edges weren't well enough secured with this method, so I switched to the more traditional method of basting all the way through to the right side midway through.  It wasn't a big deal to remove the basting threads with just one EPP block in the project.  

Basting and Templates Removed, Seam Allowances Opened, Excess Trimmed

After removing the pink basting stitches and the card stock templates, I pressed the block again from the right side and then flipped it over to carefully open up and flatten the outer seam allowances.  I deliberately avoided removing that outer crease line with my iron so I could use it as a reference as I trimmed the excess seam allowances to 1/4" from the points on my "C."  This center portion of the block measures 6 1/4".  

Right Side View

Pardon the fuzzies on my dark Indigo fabric; I've still got batting fuzzies all over my cutting mat from when I was joining batting scraps last week.  The last step to complete this monogram block will be to frame it in Indigo strips with Wasabi corner stones to float the "C" and get the block to the 8" finished size required by my quilt, but there's no reason that bit can't be done by machine.

This is the 42 x 42 Baby Quilt I'm Making

This block would probably be done, and the whole quilt top would probably be together, if I hadn't scampered off with my mom to visit my Not-Quite-Local favorite quilt shop yesterday afternoon.  I had not been to a quilt shop since pre-pandemic, so it was quite the treat.  However, we got stuck in accident traffic on the way there and by the time we arrived at the shop, there was only an hour left before their 5 PM closing time.  And I had a HORRIBLE time finding a backing fabric that would work with this quilt!  It would have been so much easier if I'd started by selecting a print backing fabric that I liked and then pulled my solid fabrics from the print for the quilt top palette.  But NO, I didn't do that -- I wanted to come up with my very own palette from the Charley Harper illustration on Pinterest...  

I saw so many fabulous prints that would have been perfect if only my Bone fabric had been whiter, or if my Grasshopper green had been more turquoise, or my Indigo had been black...  My Wasabi yellow has an awful lot of green in it.  Which I personally loved until I tried pairing it with print fabrics that had a true yellow.  Blech -- those fabrics made my lovely Wasabi fabric look like BOOGERS!!!  This is why I had to pick the backing fabric in person.  (When I'm matching fabrics in a quilt shop and I'm not bringing a whole quilt top or block with me, I just use a safety pin to hold scraps of each of my quilt top fabrics together while I'm shopping).

Backing and Binding Fabrics Purchased

Anyway, as you can see above, a couple of Kaffe Fassett prints from Free Spirit Fabrics saved the day.  The circles/squares print will be my backing and the variable width stripe will be my binding.  I know I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation (as well as frantic rummaging through a quilt shop that was about to close) by choosing a solid backing fabric, and I know that solid backing fabrics show off the quilting better than busy prints...  But I could not help myself, because it's for a baby, and I like brightly-colored, happy quilts for babies.  This will be lovely.

Well, that's all for now, as my Saturday is slipping away from me and there is still a lot left on my very aspirational To-Do list for today!  I'll be linking up and sewcializing with the following linky parties:

SATURDAY

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

·       Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

·       Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

My AQS QAL "Letter Home" Continues, Complicated With Some English Paper Piecing

I'm making some headway with my baby boy quilt NewFO!   I haven't cut out the four Wasabi (greenish yellow) QSTs yet, but I'm almost done piecing the rest of the blocks for this "quick and easy" project.

Piecing is in Progress!

I changed my mind about foundation paper piecing my center monogram block, too.  I just could not abide with those extra seams that I would have in the center of my "C" if I did FPP, so this block will be my second ever attempt at English paper piecing (EPP).  

FPP Version, with Extra Seams in the Middle of the "C"

Same Block, EPP Version, Cleaner Look with Fewer Seams

I really prefer the cleaner look of the second version with fewer seams, and I think it's worth fiddling around with hand stitching just this one block in order to get the look I want.  (Both of these blocks are in my EQ8 Block Library, by the way, under Alphabets.  I don't remember whether they were in the original Block Library that came with the software or if they were part of the BlockBase add on).  There's nothing in the software that says that the first block is supposed to be foundation paper pieced and the second block should be English paper pieced; that's just my own assessment of which method in my "quilter's tool box" would yield the best results for each version.