Lots of EPP

 Hi All -

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! It's hard to believe that August is just around the corner. Boy, does time fly!!

I've continued to work on my English Paper Piecing (EPP) project that I started in a class. I finished my last two blocks:

Third EPP Block

Fourth EPP Block

While making my blocks, I watched some YouTube videos and played with a few different methods for basting and piecing to come up with what seems to work best for me. For basting, here's what I've settled on:

• I got some Sew Tite magnets for holding the paper and the fabric together when basting. These magnets hold everything in place better than clips and they don't get in the way as much.
• I've settled on sew basting rather than glue basting. Glue basting is quicker, but I found that if I used enough glue to keep the fabric in place, then I got some fraying of the edges when releasing the paper. The glue also left residue on the papers that bothered me. But I can definitely see the appeal of glue basting for others!
• When sew basting, I prefer putting a stitch through the paper and the fabric on each side of the piece rather than only piercing the fabric with the thread. While it's nice to not have the extra holes in the paper, I felt like just basting through the fabric left the fabric too loose around the paper.

For the sewing, I have these preferences:

• I prefer using whip stitch over the flat back stitch taught in class. I had a lot of trouble picking up the small bites of fabric near the edge using the flat back stitch, which really slowed me down. The whip stitch is a lot faster for me and it is still pretty invisible on the right side.
• Again, the Sew Tite magnets hold the pieces better for me while sewing than the clips did and they are less awkward. The magnets are really easy to use when whip stitches, but you can also use them for flat back stitching by using a "palette" under the pieces you are stitching. Sew Tite sells such a palette here if you want to see how that works.

That's what seems to work for me, but I could change things as I get more experience.

Now that I have all of my blocks, I appliqued them to the panels of my bag. The Mondo Bag is made from 4 rectangular panels  I'm positioning the EPP blocks on the panels so that the blocks will be displayed on point in each of the points at the top of the bag. Here are the appliqued panels positioned on the floor like they will be sewn together to make the bag:

EPP Bag Panels

Hopefully, that gives you and idea of what I have in mind for this bag. Now I have to decide on what other decoration I want to do on the panels before sewing the bag together. I feel like there is too much plain solid fabric to leave the panels as they are, but I have to look at these for a while to decide how I really feel. I also don't want to overdo it on the decorations. My gut is telling me to put an echo stitch around the edges of the EPP blocks, 1/4" from the edges of the blocks. Then, I could stitch straight lines at random intervals from the EPP echo stitch to the end of the rectangle, parallel to the long edge of the rectangle. These lines could be in random colors used in the blocks. Once I get the panels figured out, the bag will go together pretty quickly. I want to have the bag finished for our next guild meeting on Aug 15. That's a lot of time, but I'm pretty busy after this week so I need to keep that in mind.

While I'm playing with EPP again, I decided to pick up my old EPP WIPs (works in progress) and make some progress on those, too. The first EPP project I started is a hexagon charm quilt. A charm quilt is a quilt that uses a different fabric for every piece in the quilt. Years ago I started making a charm quilt using 1.5" hexagons. (Hexagons measurements are the length of each of the 6 sides.) To put the top together, I'm piecing the hexagons together like this:

Hexagon Charm Quilt Unit

These units are easy to work on and I think will be as easy as any other units to work with when putting together the final quilt. I figure I can put the units together and then fill in with extra hexagons wherever needed to get the desired shape for the quilt. With this unit, I now have 23 units completed for my quilt. I have no idea how big I want to make this quilt at this point.

The other WIP I had sitting around is made with small octagons and squares. The edges on these pieces are only 1/2". The squares are all a solid blue fabric and the octagons are all sorts of Kaffe Fassett fabrics. I've only sewn together a few of the pieces. I'm starting with these units:

Kaffe Octagon Quilt Units

Here's an idea of what they'll look like together:

Kaffe Octagon Quilt

These are small pieces so I have a LONG way to go with this one.

Finally, I did some more knitting on my Festival of Stitches shawl designed by Lisa Hannes. I knitted the white cable section:

Festival of Stitches

I wanted to get this section done while I still had the stitch sequence in my head so I would make fewer mistakes. I also wanted to put away my cable needle. The rest of the sections should be easier. I look forward to finishing this shawl!

Well, that's it for now. I hope everyone is doing well!

Nancy