Friday, December 13, 2019

Ferris Wheel

I'm blaming starting yet another project on some of my quilting friends.  Ha!  They had been discussing English Paper Piecing (EPP).  It's a technique I've used before and really enjoyed the process.  Basically, you have paper or cardboard shapes, secure your fabric around that, hand sew the fabric pieces together, then remove the papers.  Here's a much better explanation - click here, please!

My other projects were miniatures - hand pieced, hand quilted.  The first one was a Hexagon Quilt, made in August of 2000, using Civil War reproduction fabrics:

IMG_1231HexagonQuilt

My finger is for size reference in these.

In December of that year, I pieced this one:

IMG_1234VotingBlocksMini

I called it "Voting Blocks", as I made it during the election period.

Next up, a combo of some EPP, a little appliqué, and a touch of embroidery:

IMG_1233GrandmothersTinyFlowerGarden

I called that one Grandmother's Tiny Flower Garden - made in 2007.

ANYWAY, I remember enjoying the process, so I thought I'd start another! That would explain ...

IMG_1223FerrisWheelEPP

What a mess.

I had a pattern pack of pre-made templates for a quilt called Ferris Wheel, so I thought I'd give that a whirl.

I've watched a lot of YouTube vids about EPP and the current trend is to use glue rather than stitching your fabric to the templates. That sounded a lot easier and faster!  My pieces are about half and half - some stitched, some glued. All I had to start was a glue stick, and I was a bit concerned about the template removal process.

The pattern I'm following calls for sewing your shapes into long strips ...

IMG_1348FerrisWheelRow

... two different kinds of strip sets ...

IMG_1355FerrisWheelRows

... then joining those strips together:

IMG_1503FerrisWheelRowsTogether

That's as far as I've gotten. (I even exhausted Maggie, as you can see!) The big difference between this one and the others is that there are three different shapes.  The hexagons are pleasant enough, and the squares are OK, but YIKES, those triangles are insane to deal with!  What was I thinking?!?

Anyway, I'll have time to get back to hand work coming up, so I will continue to march on it.

Oh!  And I found a "quilter's glue stick" that is recommended by some of the EPP experts.  I got mine from Amazon - you can see it here.  Very handy and much neater to work with than my old glue stick.

That's it for now!  Thanks for reading!
KZK

4 comments:

  1. Those little quilts are cute! And I like the new pattern, but I can see how those little triangles would be ruff!

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  2. Your mini quilts are just too cute! You make this EPP stuff sound so easy. We need to head to YouTube to hear more.

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  3. No EPP for me but yours all look great. I love the fabrics in the one in progress.

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  4. I can relate to all of the above comments. I love EPP too but only discovered it about a year ago. Currently working on Sue Daley pattern called Ringlets. I've already begun to collect fabrics for Quarto Petals in blues/creams. Thanks for sharing your beautiful work! cheers! Teresa

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