Ring of Coffins Pattern: Tips and Tricks Part One

Ring of Coffins Pattern: Tips and Tricks Part One {an Art School Dropout's life} EPP English Paper Piecing Foundation Paper Piecing Halloween Quilt

A few weeks back Sylvia of Flying Parrot Quilts contacted me with her idea to do a quilt along for a quilt she made using a mash up of a bunch of Halloween themed patterns. She calls it the Epic Halloween Quilt. You can see a photo of it here.

Each week she talks about a different pattern, either free or paid, that fits in the quilt. Like a puzzle piece.

This week is my Ring of Coffins pattern with Heidi Kenney’s Occupied Coffin add on (that’s included)

For anyone out there that hasn’t worked with English Paper Piecing / EPP, where it needs to be basted straight, I’m here to help! Just Keep Reading…

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#ModernMinis4Andover

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About two months ago I was contacted by the lovely people over at Andover Fabrics with an idea they had for a rainbow wall of mini quilts at QuiltCon this year. They would send me the fabric in a specific colorway and I would send them a mini quilt to hang in their booth during the event. I have been very sick, and haven’t had the energy to finish anything large, but I figured I could hand sew most of the mini so I said “yes!”

They sent me the gorgeous bundle of blue and white fabric shown above, which arrived right at the beginning of the blizzard we had. The majority of the fat quarters were either by Lizzy House or Alison Glass. The rest was from various other lines with Andover (I really should look in to them because they were all beautiful).

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WIP: My First EPP Hexie Quilt!

epp_hexie_001Ever since I got into quilting, I have dreamed of making a hexagon quilt. I thought it took some fancy machine work with impossible Y shaped seams. I was half right. You CAN do it that way, or you can hand sew them all together.

There’s a process called English Paper Piecing,  EPP or Foundation Piecing (it gos by any of these names), where you take the pattern you want to make and have the pieces cut out of paper. You then cut out fabric larger than each piece, pin the paper to it, fold over the fabric and baste stitch (like my orange stitches shown in all of these photos). When you have enough pieces for your project or block, you then whip stitch them all together and take out the paper pieces. After all of this tedious work, you have yourself a quilt top.

There are loads of proper tutorials all over the internet. Heidi posted a tutorial and template for mini hexies this past week, and there’s a bunch on Pinterest. Plus if you search YouTube, I bet you’ll find some great instructions. Also, if you just want to start small but have an even bigger impact you could try something like Rebecca’s patchwork tote bag! (her IG feed totally made me want to start this project!)

This type of project is perfect for downtime, like watching TV, waiting at the DMV or when being a passenger on a road trip. I myself started it because I am being forced to rest a bit more. Plus it’s a quilt that I don’t have to sit at a sewing machine all day to make. My poor back needs a break from that.

epp_hexie_002I will admit now, I am NOT a strong hand sewer, and I am seriously not looking forward to whip stitching all of these together. For now I try not to think about it and just dream of what the finished quilt will look like… If I ever finish it!

I want to make a 70″ square lap quilt, and by my calculations, it is going to take 800+ hexagons to make. That’s a lot! I am able to finish around 30 a night, so if I work on it every night then it will take me a month. That’s a scary number to me btw, so I may just call it quits at 400 because I am also dreaming up a quilt that is just half hexies and the rest is solid colored gray. I guess I’ll decided when I get to the halfway point.

epp_hexie_003epp_hexie_004I’m happy I went with the 3″ size too! Because if I had done the normal 1″ size, it would have taken 2500+ hexies to finish a quilt. SCARY!!

Have any of you made one of these? Or are making one? Any helpful hints?

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