I first shared this project with you about this time last year. So you’d think I’d be done with it by now right? So … not so much. Still, I am making some progress on my English Paper Piecing project.
Just to remind you why I’m doing this project
I spent a lot of years making a line of sewn products (tea cozies, french press cozies, and several sizes of tea travel wallets). These items were sold wholesale to tea companies, tea shops, and gift shops. The fabrics I chose for these items covered a lot of design styles from Asian to old English to novelty prints. When I decided to close down that part of my business to concentrate on pattern design I knew that I didn’t want to make quilts out of the small amounts (of a bazillion different fabrics) that I had left over.
A memory quilt of some type seemed to be just the thing to work a small amount of each of these fabrics into one quilt to remind me of the years I’d spent nurturing and growing that business. I wasn’t interested in doing a scrappy quilt – I’ve done lots of those. I wanted to use these meaningful fabrics in some other style of quilt, perhaps something I’d never done before.
That’s when I came up with the idea to create Hexie flowers out of each of them – and work those into an overall design.
As for my approach to this project – it’s been a real learning process. I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos, read a lot of how-to blog posts, and tried several different techniques and tools. I think I’ve found a process that’s working for me (which means it’s going a little faster now).
How big will the quilt be when it’s done?
Who knows – it all depends on how many flowers I end up with. My goal is to create one flower from every fabric that I used to make those products. The flowers will be arranged in a wreath shape and the space inside the wreath as well as outside of it will be filled in with tone-on-tone (white, cream, and very light gray) hexies. I will also in set lots of small leaves between the flowers when I join them together. The leaves will then be stitched down to the quilt top using either embroidery or thread painting. That’s the picture in my head – we’ll see how it goes once I get to that point.
In the picture on the left below – I still need to fussy cut the hexies from each of these fabrics. No idea how many are in this tote. The picture on the right – is a few more hexies that I have already fussy cut. They need to be basted to the papers before I can put them together.
I love how these flowers are going to look on a tone-on-tone Hexie background. In the picture below you can see the fabrics I’ll be using for the background. The picture on the right includes a few of the flowers I’ve already completed.
Will I ever get done with the English Paper Piecing project? Yes, I will. Here’s the thing – I’m loving working on it, one flower at a time. I can have something that looks and feels finished – every time I complete a single flower. I love that I can take it with me and everything I need fits in a very small organizer case. For right now – it’s the project I’m turning to when I need my ‘moment of Zen”.