English Paper Piecing

Taaa daaaa! My first attempt at English Paper Piecing (EPP)  - a few sneak peaks!

Because I consider myself to be a modern quilter, I have been a devoted machine quilter for quite some years, but recently, I have been trying out a few hand-made projects. (BTW, I do this stitching while I watch re-runs of Sex and the City. This stops all this quaint old hand sewing from becoming too "Little House on the Prairie".) Here are some pictures of the first results. I cut out lots of tumbler templates and tacked the fabric pieces onto them, then whip-stitched them together. When I started, the stitches were sometimes a bit too obvious for my liking, but I improved with practice. I made five 13-piece rings and these will be appliqued to a quilt. Here is one of the rings:

And here is a picture of the rings piled on top of each other.

Back after a few months - Baby Quilt Time!

Finally - a new quilt to share with you!

I was away from the blogosphere for a while. I had a lot going on at work and was also in a bit of a quilting rut. I know that most quilters have this once in a while. None of my projects seemed to be turning out quite right, I was not coming up with any new, fun ideas and quilting started to seem more like a chore. So I decided to give it a break. These past couple of months, I have been finding my way back. I have some new quilt projects in the pipeline and I have also started on some hand sewing - English paper piecing and embroidery! Even though it takes much longer than sewing by machine, hand crafted projects are so meditative. (And if you are sewing while watching TV, it is much harder to mindlessly eat high carb snacks!)

Anyway, here is a quilt I finished recently for a newborn boy. I am pretty happy with this one. All fabric from my stash, some of which was given a new lease of life through this quilt (you know, those pieces you have for years but never manage to find a project for). These are iPhone photos, so not the best, and there are a few shadows. But you'll get the general idea!

This is the front of the quilt. The white is Kona Snow (of course!)

Here is a close-up of the front.

And this is the back. Please excuse the shadows. Was not the best light or location (or photographer..yours truly!)