Craftsy Month – Quick and Easy English Paper Piecing

This post is part of Craftsy Review Month on Sew Sweetness! To see a schedule of all posts, click here!

I’m excited to kick off Craftsy month on my blog with my review of Helen Stubbings recently-released Craftsy class called Quick and Easy English Paper Piecing.

First I feel like I should give you some background on my paper-piecing experience. I gave it a shot about 4 years ago, just the one time, and I don’t remember getting much of a spread accomplished. I don’t recall a lot about the experience but I do remember feeling very ungainly and unsure of myself and remember it being stressful and not fun. I *constantly* see people posting English Paper Piecing (or EPP) projects on their social media, and always think that they are so beautiful, so I wanted to give it one last try. Basically, I want to be fly like Nicole from Modern Handcraft.

When I first heard that Helen Stubbings was coming out with an English Paper Piecing class on Craftsy, I knew this was my chance. Within the first two lessons, I already discovered that Helen had a better way for backing the fabric pieces. In the past I had used cardstock to back my fabric (which is totally fine if you prefer that), but Helen introduced her fusible applique paper and pre-cut templates (which you can find in her shop or ask at your local quilt shop). Since I’m a bag-maker and well acquainted with using fusible products, I felt really at-ease using her fusible applique paper (I bought the 20-sheet packs) on the backside of my fabric.

Helen is from Australia but she speaks in a clear, easy-to-follow manner and I quite enjoyed her direction. Besides going over the basic’s, this Craftsy class also discusses paper-piecing templates including clamshells, apple cores, diamonds, and even how to whipstitch your paper pieces together by sewing machine if you’re in a real hurry! I have already referenced this class several times and I am so happy that it will stay in my Craftsy account forever so that I can watch it again and again.

To go along with my EPP adventure, I decided to go big or go home and make a millefiore quilt. I bought the books that the La Passaglia quilt is in, but once I received the books I felt a little bit intimidated looking at the instructions. I also got a book by Katja Marek called The New Hexagon: 52 Blocks to English Paper Piece and it was incredibly straightforward and easy to understand because all of the blocks in the book are templates and there is little explanation needed besides the introduction to paper-piecing.

To make a long story short, Katja’s photograph above from her Millefiore Facebook group is the project that I set my sights on. I thought it was beautiful and instead of adding small pieces to the quilt at a time, each section is assembled into larger hexagons first. The quilt above is a free pattern in the afore-mentioned Facebook group, but you must have The New Hexagon book to make it because the book has all of the templates you’ll need.

If you like keeping super-organized, Target has these handy storage cases in their plastic bins section. Best $5.99 I ever spent! Thanks for the tip Modern Handcraft and Spun Monkey! It has a clear lid, which kind of disappears in this photo, lol.

Anyway, in Katja’s book she shows photographs of quilter’s template plastic that she has marked up in order to fussy cut perfectly the fabrics, and I think this was a great idea because each piece I had to duplicate, such as in my squirrel photo above, I was able to do so without any guesswork.

In Helen’s Craftsy class, she suggests particular needles to use and also makes suggestions for thread, and I followed all of her suggestions. The thinnest weight of thread I had in my stash is 50wt Aurifil, but she showed 60wt Superior threads in her class, so I purchased the same Super Bob thread holder that she showed in the class and also bought Tulip applique needles. She showed a very easy method in the class for threading a needle and tying off thread (which you’ll have to watch the class to see but now I can knot my thread without tying one knot on top of another on top of another! Brilliant!). Because of the thinner thread and because I have a color selection to match thread to the fabric, my stitches are less and less visible.

So now thanks to this class I am already assembling my paper pieces in a more efficient way, I can thread my needle without holding it up to the light, and I can knot my thread perfectly every time! The more blocks I make the better I become and the less my stitches show! Thank you Helen! I am actually much enjoying working on my project and I find myself looking forward to the times that I will be out and about and have an excuse to work on them.

I decided to choose all Tula Pink fabrics for my quilt, since I have so many of them, lol! It’s going great because all of Tula’s fabrics have such bright colors and vivid designs. I’ve decided that this first rosette that I am working on will be mainly pink and green fabrics. I am looking forward to making one of the future rosettes with blue fabrics!

I took my family to Disney World last week and I prepared some fabric pieces before we left. In the evenings when we had some down time at the hotel, I pulled out my English Paper Piecing and had some enjoyable time stitching. I love it so much! I’m so happy that I gave it another chance, thanks to this Craftsy class.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Quick and Easy English Paper Piecing! Hopefully you can tell from my review that I was genuinely excited about getting on the EPP bandwagon thanks to this class!!

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