Corona Quilting

My first quilt

Spending more time at home in social distancing, I've returned to my old pass-time of quilting. In response to a request from family I'm sharing a 'how to' for English Paper Piecing, a hand-sew traditional patchwork and quilting method. The main advantage is: it's low-tech, and feels like a welcome respite from the news and being plugged in all day, now I'm permanently working from home. It's simple enough for kids to master, so you can add it to your home schooling schedule once the schools close down tomorrow.  As well as positive benefits on well-being, you can achieve fantastic results, for not much outlay. 

The first picture is my very first quilt, made some years ago. I started by wanting to recycle some of my son's baby shirts, and they make up the centre piece of this quilt. 

What is English Paper Piecing?

Fabric patches are 'stabilised' by fixing them onto paper templates - the 'paper piece'. The patches are then sewn into larger patterns, or blocks by hand. 

The pieces of paper are removed when the shapes are all finally sewn together before you move onto quilting. But lets not get ahead of ourselves and I'll start with the basics.

Templates 7cm and 5cm squares

The Templates

Let's start with squares as they are by far the easiest to work with.

You need two templates - one for the paper and one for the fabric. For my first quilt I made templates from thick card, but then I bought these acrylic 'pre-cut' ones which are more durable. The fabric template needs to be bigger than the paper one to allow for a seam.  These two are 7cm and 5cm. 

The Fabric

If you can, chose quality 100% cotton fabrics, preferably of similar weight and 'pre-washed' to minimise shrinkage when you wash your quilt for the first time. This isn't a problem if you are re-cycling. 

Marking and Cutting

Marking and Cutting 

The smaller template is for marking and cutting the paper. If you want to get going straight away all you need is some printer paper, a pencil, ruler and possibly a set-square. Of course you can go online and order pre-cut papers, or download and print paper templates 

Place the bigger template onto your fabric, draw around the template with a marker and cut out the fabric shape with scissors. 

There is nothing quick about this process, but haven't we all got plenty of time on our hands these days? 

Basting

The traditional way to secure the fabric to the paper piece is with needle and thread. Some do use fabric glue but a small pile of fabric and paper pieces, needle, thread and scissors can all fit in a small sandwich bag and be taken anywhere. 

Fold over the seam allowance along one of the edges of the paper. Start in the middle of the edge, stitch through all the layers with big basting stitches along the folded edge towards the first corner. 

As you baste, turn the paper piece clock-wise (if right handed) then fold over the fabric at the corner, turn the paper piece, fold over at the corner, secure with stitching as you go around. You don't have to worry about the neatness of these stitches as they will all be removed prior to quilting. 

And that's enough quilting for today. Check back soon for next steps.