From Apple Core Template to English Paper Pieced Bridal Vase

I'm been playing around with turning flat quilting templates into 3-D constructions. Here's one of my new experiments

It's 8" tall. I think it's a spinal column vase, and it started with a 2.5" template acquired years ago. 

Longtime quilters recognize this as a classic apple core shape. Google "apple core quilts" you'll find books, patterns and kits to make scrappy quilts with hundreds of pieces this shape. Especially "charm" quilts, with a different fabric for each piece.

The results are definitely charming - but never charming enough for me to want to make one. Because of the curves, you have to do a lot of scary clipping on inside seams, and precision sewing.  

But the novelty factor drew me to that template a couple of weeks ago. The great thing about making small projects like vases (as opposed to quilts), is that you only need to make a few of the same shape, rather than hundreds! 

I start by cutting out the shapes from an old cardboard mailer. I taped pieces together, and played. Here are two  candidate formations: 

I still wasn't sure where I was going when I started making fabric versions. I pulled gorgeous prints from Michelle Freedman"Fire and Ice" collection from Maywood Studios. (Michelle is a fantastic designer; find her quilt patterns at https://linktr.ee/stitchwellandprosper)

I cut 12 apple core shapes out of stiff interfacing with fusible on one side. I cut an oversized apple core shape out of the featured fabric.  I placed it face up on the non-fusible side of each interfacing shape. Then  I wrapped the seam allowances around  to the back, and fused them in place there. This required a whole lot of scary clipping at each piece's waist line.

On the reverse side, I essentially needle-turn appliqued the "lining", to cover the raw edges that came over from the featured side. Again, abundant clipping.

I made six with Michelle's fabric on the featured side; plus 6 more pieces with a dark purple batik.

(In my polyhedron-making book at the bottom of this post,  I make all sorts of bowls and brooches, and more this way; but all those shapes have nice straight sides - hexagons, octagons pentagons, etc. - no clipping required.) 

I experimentally sewed the pieces together with embroidery floss and large stitches, doing what English Paper Piecers call the "flat back stitch." I figured I could  go over it later to replace the big stitches with smaller ones. (Spoiler alert: that's not going to happen until this thing falls apart!)

The cardboard model showed me that I needed the base to be flat; otherwise the vase would rock! So I cut the four pieces on the bottom row (in the photo above) in a straight line before covering them with fabric. 

I brought the last edges together, and here we are. It not only reminded me of spinal column, but a curvy person...in a corset...of a bridal gown...bridal buttons leapt to mind, so I sewed small vintage shank buttons down one edge.

You can't see them from the back. 

This is all trial and error! Before I hit on the vase, I strongly considered a bracelet. Flat, it would look like this: 

Which also reminds me of a spine. And in a circle, minus one piece, you'd wind up with this cuff (Imagine it without the binder clips. Although if I could find sterling silver binder clips, they could be a feature!) 

If you're interested in learning my technique for covering (much easier, straight-line) interfacing shapes and using them to make interesting containers of all sorts, check out my newly updated book, "Stitch-a-hedron; English Paper Pieced Polyhedron Gifts and Accessories to Sew," available as a digital pattern in my etsy shop, here, and also soon on Connecting Threads! 

Are you Buying this Stairway to Heavenly Apartment Pods?

I’m overhauling and expanding my cityscape quilt booklet, and exploring new ideas. Warning: The Internet catacombs of interesting architectural ideas for quilters is freaking infinite. 

The photo below, I would argue, represents rainbow stairs leading to a modern, Brutalist, warm, diversity-welcoming, almost heavenly apartment building made up of hexagonal pods.

 It's mostly my fantasy, but partly influenced by the mind-boggling Guangzou Circle Building in China, designed by Italian architect Joseph di Pasquale. I figured if di Pasquale could make a coin-like circle stand on its edge to serve as a useful building, I could do the same with a coin-like hexagon. The overall hexagon shape is made up of smaller hexagons and half-hexagons - I think the lower, colorful halves look like balconies, and I can imagine putting plants peeping out from their top edge (as in this hypothetical 3-second  drawing). 

I haven’t yet stitched the stairs in position, and probably won’t until I know what will go under the building. In the meantime, I get to play with the components, giving me way too many options! 

- When I turn the building upside down, it takes on an almost heart shape. Perhaps the Hallmark Channel should film movies here. I like the way the colorful hexagon halves become window shades.

- If I place the stairs off-center on the hexagon unit, below, it looks like an artistic apartment building with hexagon "blocks" piled  haphazardly - a formation which could continue to grow asymmetrically, like a coral reef.

- With the apartment unit sideways, below, the hexagons halves become two sides of a pleat that sticks out. (The blue is the cement, the colors are the drapes?)

All of the above also look a bit like trees to me, with the stairs as the trunk.  

But when I flip the stairs upside down, I got a high fiber ice cream cone! 

Just what I wanted! Your thoughts on what these things might be are also welcomed!

How did I make the components? The stairs took me a solid week of wrestling and gnashing my teeth over the rules of perspective, to figure out a non-tedious semi-improvisational approach, which I am trying to codify for my revised book. As for the hexagons, oy, I actually basted each half-hexagon and hexagon piece around freezer paper, and then did traditional y-seam piecing. I don't recommend it; it wasn’t fun; you can’t see the flaws but they are there. If and when I do this again, I am going to do it with English Paper Piecing, much the same way I made my masked hexagon quilt, by sewing two different color rectangles first the traditional way, and then basting that unit around a cardstock hexagon, and sewing hexagons together by hand or with a machine zig zag. 

Stay tuned, more experimental buildings are coming!

Almost Ancient: English Paper Pieced Mosaics with Cheryl Lynch's New Fabric

My newest finished piece!

It's a tabletopper or wallhanging, about 20" across, made up of seven English Paper Pieced (EPP) blocks. The faux mosaic fabric - those little pieces aren't separate, they're printed - are from a fascinating new collection by my friend, quilt designer Cheryl Lynch. 

In recent years, Cheryl's been designing mosaic quilt patterns, made by cutting fabrics into small pieces. But even more recently, she designed fabric with the look of complex mosaics - but you can finish in a fraction of the time. 

Cheryl gifted me with these FQs.

First I cut out a bunch of 3.75" equilateral triangles, and moved them around.

For the next test, I pulled a purple floral print from my stash. 

Etcetera. I liked all the options - Facebook and Instagram polls of my friends resulted in no clear winner - so I put those triangles aside and decided to see what this fabric would look like in the smaller, more complicated stars in my EPP book, "Hexagon Star Quilts".

I started by printing seven patterns from the book onto my newest notion, water-soluble "Hugs'n Kisses Applique Paper," by Helen Stubbings. (No affiliation). In the past, when planning to do EPP by machine, I printed designs onto Decor Bond (by Pellon), a medium-weight fusible interfacing, which remains in the project. But I was eager to see how the applique paper would work. Here's one  page printed onto the applique paper - I cut out Star 5 from this page.  

With EPP, each piece is fused to a slighly larger piece of fabric; the fabric is wrapped around it; then everything is sewn together by hand or machine - I used the latter. Here's more or less what Star #5 looked like finished.

I made six more blocks (all 6" high), including the next one which is the centerpiece. This green fabric isn't one of Cheryl's - it's from my stash, and I stitched the white lines to give it a mosaic look. 

The stars surrounding the center include Star 39, below, with the addition of a gold-brown print from my stash:  

Next, Star 56, with my violet print added: 

Star 65: 

Star 28

And last, Star 15

The results are in the photos on top of this post, and the bottom. How did I like the applique paper? Compared to Decor Bond, it's not quite as stiff, and therefore more challenging to fold small sharp-angled pieces accurately.

But I discovered that when I scored the fabric with a sharp-edged piece of plastic - like a credit card - next to the interfacing, it made accurate folding and basting more achievable. The big advantage of applique paper over Decor Bond is that the former will dissolve in the wash, presumably leaving a softer project than the latter. 

Here's the back after all the pieces were sewn together. 

From a distance:

I laid it on batting, traced around the top (with a water soluble marker), then cut out the batting inside the traced line. This results in a slightly smaller piece of batting than the top. 

Next I placed the top on my backing fabric, and cut out the backing fabric about 3/8" larger than the top all the way around. All the concave angles must be clipped, in order to get them to turn under.

Make a sandwich: Backing fabric on the table,  wrong side up;  batting on top of that; and the pieced top on top, right side up. Pin or clamp the edges every few inches. Do a hand whipstitch, stitching the outer folds on the top piece to new folds you create as you go, on the backing fabric. Finally, I stitched around the edges with a machine straight stitch.  You can't see the hand whipstitches in this photo from the back, but you can see the machine straight stitching. 

The entire back:

And the front, all quilted, this time on a white background. 

Very European, esta bien? And thanks to Cheryl's fabric, it took a lot less time to make than, say, Gaudi's Parc Guell in Barcelona. See more of this fabric, and projects made from it, in this excellent new article. It is now available in quilt shops. More information about my EPP book is here. 

English Paper Pieced Coaster Tutorial: Finish a Block, Enjoy a Fantasy Euro-Vacation!

Are you a wannabe traveler, sitting at home, while your muscles and your miles (frequent flier) stagnate? 

This project can brighten your days and remind you of better times and more interesting places. 

It's an English Paper Pieced Euro-coaster, upon which we can place our demitasse of home-brewed espresso, or perhaps a pot of Earl Grey. 

Put another way, this tutorial shows how I used fabric from Paris, and one of the blocks in my new English Paper Piecing book, "Hexagon Star Quilts," to make a coaster. It would also work as a hanging ornament. You can adapt this technique to finish any EPP block. 

By the way, English Paper Piecing really does come from England, and has always been very popular there. Right now, it's enjoying a huge resurgence around the world, for good reason - it's portable, easy, relaxing and addictive. 

This particular project started with a pile of fat quarters I was lucky enough to buy in France two years ago (my fabric-related adventures there are blogged here).

French Frou Frou, looks similar to Liberty of London; it's lightweight and often floral, but not as expensive. Frou Frou is easy to find in US shops, with a little help from the Internet. (William Morris fabrics have a similar look.) 

I chose Star 83 because the central piece is large enough to highlight an interesting print. If you have my book, find the star on page 115. 

If you don't have my book, you can download Star 83 for free from Dropbox, using the link HERE. (If that doesn't work, email me at cathydotperlmutteratgmaildotcom). It looks like this: 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Choose three fabrics with varying values and hues. 

2. If you own my book, photocopy or scan Star 83 onto cardstock. In the photo, the book is on the left, and the scanned cardstock version on the right. 

   

If you don't own my book, use the pink Dropbox link above to download the pattern and print it onto cardstock.

3. Cut around the outline. 

4. Don't cut it apart yet! First we'll create a full-size backing with turned edges. For the back, I suggest you use a fabric that won't show cappuccino, croissant, or french fry stains. Lay the entire hexagon on the wrong side of your  backing fabric. 

5. Cut around the edges, leaving at least 3/8" seam allowance. 

6. Bring fabric and the template to the ironing board. Center the paper on top. Press all six edges firmly inward. 

Here's the reverse side with all edges pressed in. 

6. Remove the cardstock and press the edges inward one more time, to get the folds sharp. 

7. Don't cut up the pattern yet! We need it for one more thing - to cut the batting to size. Place it on a batting scrap.  

8. Trace around it.  

9. Cut just inside the line you drew.

Now it's all cut out, leaving the drawn line behind. 

10. Cut apart the cardstock pattern, and baste fabric to all its pieces, using your favorite English Paper Piecing techniques. If you are a beginner, my book has extensive explanation of different ways to baste, with thread or glue.  

11. Sew the pieces together, by hand or machine - again, beginners can find methods and tips in my book. Piecing order: First sew each A piece between two B pieces. Then sew each BAB unit to one side of the central triangle. 

12. Now you have three components: The assembled top, the batting, and the backing. 

13. Tuck the batting into the backing. Press the flaps over each edge. (Iron again, if you like.)

14. Remove all papers (right) from the back of the pieced block. (You may be able to reuse them to make more coasters!) 

15. Place the top over the batting and backing. 

16. Use pins or sewing clips to align the outer folds on top and bottom, and tuck seam allowances and tails inside the sandwich. 

(Some of my clips are plastic - some are metal binder clips. I find the silver binder clips easier to open than black binder clips; the plastic ones are easiest of all on the hands.)

This is also an opportunity to baste one long edge of trim - like rick-rack - between the layers, extending beyond the edge. 

17. Hand sew the edges shut - by hand, with a ladder or whipstich. By machine, you can use a straight stitch, with monofilament thread, or thread that matches the fabric (I used white here so you can see it.) An open-toe foot helps, and a sharp awl (or seam ripper) is a necessity, to tuck bits inside and do last-minute adjustments of folds. You can see my metal awl on the right below - there's a pink sewing clip on it permanently, which keeps the awl from rolling away!   

Here's the block with machine straight stitching (white). 

If you like, go around again, with a decorative stitch and contrasting thread. You could even couch a decorative cord or yarn there.

18. Just for looks, and to ensure the batting stays in place when laundered, do some quilting. I stitched all the way around the inner angle of each background diamond, which makes them pop forward (I used dark thread that's hard to see in the picture.) 

 My last step was to quilt three straight lines on each red triangle, extending inward from each outer point. 

Back: 

Now heat up the espresso machine (or locate your can of instant cappuccino powder), and you're ready for your Zoom cafe, perhaps with a virtual background of the Eiffel Tower. It's not the same as being there - but look on the bright side - you don't have to inhale other peoples' cigarette smoke!?

And hopefully, the sun will metaphorically rise again, our country will get its act together, and surely, one day, we will again be welcomed in places far beyond the front porch.