Fussy Cutting Tutorial July 01 2017

Fussy Cutting Complex Designs for EPP by Carolyn Pytlik

Fussy cutting fabric for English Paper Piecing (EPP) can simply be cutting pretty motifs or can involve creating whole new designs with adjoining pieces. This article outlines my method for the latter.

There are numerous methods and hints for English Paper Piecing. My methods are not fast, but I believe they can give you magnificent results. Maybe this article will send you on a whole new adventure or maybe you will simply gain a hint or two to help you along the way. Always remember to have fun!

First, Basic Supplies:

• An acrylic cutting template with a 3/8" seam allowance. The 3/8" seam gives you a little wiggle room.
• A fussy cut viewer, available in a variety of products. I cut mine from plain white cardstock by tracing the paper piece to be used onto the cardstock and carefully cutting it out.
• Paper pieces.
• A marking tool. My favorite is a Sewline fine mechanical pencil. 
• A sandpaper board behind the fabric will keep it from shifting.
• Small wonder clips for holding the fabric to the paper pieces when basting.
• Needle and thread for basting fabric to the paper pieces and later for adjoining pieces. Glue basting is an option; it is quicker. To get the results I am seeking, I may reposition my fabric numerous times; thread basting makes this easy for me. And, I really enjoy the basting process.
• Sharp scissors. I prefer Karen Kay Buckley light blue six-inch scissors for the serrated edge which grabs the fabric and her small green scissors for snipping threads.
• A Magic Mirror is a great help for viewing. It is important to remember that a mirror gives you a reverse image.

The next picture reveals 6-pointed stars, each with a complex fussy cutting motif creating an adjoining design. This is easiest to do when the motif is symmetrical.

When making my first cut for a complex design, I place my fussy cutting viewer in position and make tiny registration marks at two or three points. I remove the viewer and line up my acrylic cutting template to those marks. I trace around the template, then cut exactly on the tracing line. For additional identical cuts, I line up my first cut fabric shape in an identical position on the fabric, both right sides up. I place the acrylic template on top and draw around that shape, then cut. I continue using the first cut piece as a guide. I cut every piece individually.

When basting, I like to make light pencil marks on the back of my paper pieces to line up my fabric. Wonder clips will hold the fabric in place before basting. At this point, you can turn the piece to the front to see if the placement is exact. Don't be surprised if this takes a few attempts. I baste with my long stitches on the back for two reasons. First, for photographing so that the threads don't show on the front. Second, the long stretch of thread on the back holds the folded edge of the fabric in place better.

Once all pieces are basted to my satisfaction, I use thin milliners needles and a strong cotton thread to whip stitch pieces together with very small close stitches. I often start my stitching at a critical matching point, even though this requires knotting off more than once in a seam. I have a pair of very fine pointed embroidery scissors to pick out threads when I'm not satisfied, and I use those quite often.

With a little practice and patience, you can achieve magnificent results. And when you go to the fabric store or sort through your stash, you will look at fabric with a whole new perspective.

About Carolyn Pytlik

(Pictured above blocks made by Carolyn from Visible Light by Melissa Peda)

Carolyn Pytlik has been sewing since she was a child.  In addition to English Paper Piecing, she likes needle turn appliqué, embroidery, counted cross stitch, fabric and cats.  You can see some of her projects in progress on Instagram @cheshire_cat_quilts. 

Hand Piecing Tutorial April 15 2017

The Joy of Hand Piecing by Donna Fitzpatrick

Why would anyone want to hand piece?  When I was learning to make quilts, one of my first projects was a sampler quilt that could be either hand pieced or machine pieced. After making a couple of blocks by hand, I came to the conclusion that hand pieced blocks weren’t as durable and took too long to make.  Since then, I have learned to love this technique for a few reasons:

Hand pieced blocks are more precise. It is easy to allow pieces to shift when you are machine piecing, but you are holding everything in place when you piece by hand.

Curves and Y-seams are a lot easier to do by hand.

Handwork is relaxing!  Like the slow food movement, I am seeing a resurgence of slow quilting. Getting a quilt completed in a day may be fine when you are a beginning quilter, but it gets expensive and you end up with a pretty big stockpile of quilts if all of your projects are quick strip quilts and you are turning one out every few days.

Handwork is portable.  Watching TV, waiting in a doctor’s office, long trips in a car, boat, or plane are all places you can easily work on a handwork project when you can’t piece by machine.

My opinion of the durability of hand pieced blocks has changed as I have practiced it more, especially if I am quilting the finished project densely by machine, so here is how I do it.

Materials you will need

• Straw needles or other long, fine needles with a small eye - I use a size 11.
• Thread - I prefer Aurifil 50 weight in a neutral color.
• Scissors - Karen Kay Buckley’s Perfect Scissors are my favorite—I like the serrated tip that holds the fabric. They should be fine tipped and sharp.
• Template plastic, pattern, and Jen Kingwell’s Simple Seam Wheel, or acrylic templates
• Fabric
• Pencil
• Sand board or sandpaper
• Flatter fabric relaxant

Tracing and Cutting

Although tracing templates is time consuming, fussy cutting can give you a great look and can be very addictive.  Once you have done this for a while, you never look at fabric the same again.  Templates may be made by tracing from a book or pattern onto template plastic or purchased as a set.  Just be mindful whether the edge of the template is the sewing line or the cutting line.

Trace the template onto the wrong side of the fabric.  I like to use a mechanical pencil for this.  The right side of the fabric should be face down on a piece of sand board or medium sandpaper to keep it from slipping while you trace.  If you are using a template with an edge that is the sewing line, you may just 'eyeball' the quarter inch seam allowance when you cut, or use Jen Kingwell’s “Simple Seam Wheel” to add a quarter inch for the cutting line.

Hint: Take care to use the thickest template plastic you can find and press down firmly. I have trouble with my template shifting or the wheel sliding under the template if the plastic is not thick enough.

When using purchased templates, I add several sticky dots of non-slip grips, (Figure 1) and place them on both sides if the template needs to be flipped for mirror image pieces.

If you are using a template in which the outer edge is the cutting edge, you will need to draw the sewing line.

Hint: For straight edges, I like to turn the template around (Figure 2) so that the seam line of the template is on the cutting line of the fabric to get a perfect seam allowance.

If the piece is curved, I mark the dots of the seam allowance corners and move the template into the seam allowance to connect the dots (Figures 3 and 4).

When fussy cutting multiple identical pieces for a kaleidoscope effect, I trace a design element from the fabric onto the template to assure I align it the same for all the pieces. Pay attention to the grain of the fabric when tracing your pieces, as pieces cut on the bias will stretch more, which may be desirable for curves and undesirable for edges.

Once you have your pieces traced, cut on the inside edge of the cutting line to cut off your marking.

Piecing

I prefer to piece with a straw needle, as it glides through the fabric more easily with multiple stitches on the needle. I use a 50 weight Aurifil thread because the seam lies flatter than a heavier thread, but this is a personal preference and some prefer a heavier thread depending on the end use of the quilt and how it will be quilted.

To begin piecing, I pin two pieces right sides together, sticking a pin through the sewing line to make sure it lines up with the sewing line on the bottom piece. I do this with the corner dots and several places along the seam line. I use a piece of thread about eighteen inches long, and I like to coat it with a thread conditioner such as Thread Heaven. This makes it glide more easily and reduces tangling.

The stitch used for hand piecing is a simple running stitch (Figure 5).

I start with a quilter’s knot at the edge of a seam, but I try not to put a know where several pieces will meet. I use a rocking motion to get four small stitches onto the needle, then push through with the thimble on the middle finger of my right hand.

The trick is to now take a single back stitch before continuing on to the next set of four running stitches. This locks the running stitch in place and adds strength, and if the thread breaks it keeps the seam from undoing itself.

When I reach a seam in one of the pieces, rather than sewing the seam allowances down, I pass the needle through the seam and then continue sewing on the other side (Figure 6).

When I get to the end of a seam, I take a few small stitches and a back stitch, but then add the next piece without knotting off if I can, so that the junction of several pieces will not have several knots or be a point of weakness. When I reach the end of my thread, I make a loop that I pass the needle through twice (Figure 7). I like to finger press as I go with a stylus, then press the block using Flatter spray fabric relaxant.

I hope you enjoy making precise hand pieced blocks. Happy sewing!

About Donna Fitzpatrick

Donna has been sewing since she earned her sewing badge in Girl Scouts.  She made her first quilt in 1986, but most of her sewing for the next twenty years consisted of counted cross stitch, smocking, and garment making.  She picked quilting up again when her youngest child went away to college in 2007, and has enjoyed all forms of quiltmaking since then.  In 2016, she started Forest Beach Cottage Quilts, making custom quilts, binding, and teaching sewing and dyeing lessons.

Follow Donna at fbcottagequilts.com.

Big Stitch Quilting Tutorial February 01 2017

Big Stitch Quilting by Charlotte Noll

I have been machine quilting for many years.  My first quilts were hand quilted.  When I had children, it was too time consuming so I purchased a sewing machine with free motion capabilities and never looked back.

As a member of the South Florida Modern Quilt Guild I have learned some new to me techniques.  Several of my modern quilting friends were big stitch hand quilting using thicker threads. The guild had presentations on this technique, and I decided to add some big stitching to machine quilted modern quilts. It looked nice...very easy, forgiving and fun to do.

Then, Jen asked me to make a sample from her Mark Maker kit and to big stitch the entire 54 inch by 90 inch quilt. The supplies included lovely Sue Spargo Eleganza Perle Cotton threads and plain cream fabric for the backing. That made me nervous because my stitches on the back were never very even, but I decided to work on this issue and do my best. Happy to say I found an easy way to make the back stitches look almost as good as the front - keep reading and I will share what I have learned with you.

Materials you will need:

• Basted quilt ready for quilting - start small but don’t be afraid to go big!
• Quilting thread
• Needles
• Thimble if desired
• Marking tools
• Small scissors to cut thread

My Current Project

While attending a Heather Jones Design workshop, I created a quilt pattern from an inspiration picture I took of stacked chairs. I pieced it as a mini and will big stitch it with Sashiko inspired stitches in a grid format.

• Choose thread color(s) to blend or contrast. Sometimes I do both. The thicker the thread the more it will be seen but too thick can be hard to stitch.
• My favorite is the Sue Spargo Collection - Eleganza Perle Cotton Size 8 - Solid and Variegated.  Very smooth to stitch with and a beautiful presentation.

• Sturdy needle with a sharp tip is the best.  My favorite is Big Stitch Quilting Needle Pack.
• Eye Size : Use the smallest eye of the needle that the thread will go through smoothly so that it doesn’t unthread easily or shred the thread as you stitch. For Perle Cotton 8, I use the smallest needle in the Big Stitch Quilting Needle Pack.  This needle pack has 3 different sizes so you can find the best fit for the thread you are using.

• Personally, I need to use a  thimble on my right middle finger to push the needle.  I don’t care for a big thimble so I love this small sticky metal dimpled Thimble Crown. You can also use the Thimble-It sticky ovals.

• Create an outline drawing of your quilt and sketch the quilting design if desired.
• For no marking, pick a design and direction then stitch  for free hand stitching designs.  Echo stitching around patchwork or baptist fans are perfect for this method.
• Or use your favorite marking tool to create your design on your quilt top.  Don’t mark the entire quilt at once - do a section you are comfortable with.
• I only use marking tools that I’m positive will not remain on the quilt top. Hera marker (makes an indent on the fabric to follow), chalk or masking tape (my favorite).

For Mark Maker I quilted interlocking triangles and diamonds. I used masking tape around shapes and then stitched inside the tape. To quilt interlocking circles I used a plate as the template.

For Stacked Chairs, I used masking tape to outline the grid sections and stitch lines inside each grid according to my sketch outline.

• To hoop or not to hoop?  Some hoop the area they are working on.  Others lay the quilt on their lap. I don’t use a hoop.  If it is a large quilt, I spread it out on my sewing table to support the weight.
• Thread length. Cut a piece of thread that is enough for one shape such as the circle above.  If there are no distinct shapes then approximately 20 inches is a good length - hand to shoulder if you don’t have a ruler handy.
• Starting Knot (quilter’s knot).  Make a small tight knot by wrapping the thread once around the needle and guiding it down to the end of the thread and pulling tight.  Bury the knot by entering the back up through the batting and a seam (if possible) so the knot is held firm.  Pull the knot through the back fabric into the batting listening for a little pop.  You might need to put your fingernail on the fabric near the knot to open the threads.  Trim the thread tail.

• One Stitch at a Time