February Aurifil Artisan Showcase – English Paper Piecing
Welcome to the February Showcase for our Aurifil Artisans! This month we have joined forces with our friends at Paper Pieces to challenge our Artisans to create a project using English Paper Piecing. As always we are so impressed with their gorgeous creations and we’re excited to share them with you!
*Click on each Artisan’s name below to read more about their project.*
Lorna Slessor – EPP cushion pieced with 50wt thread, half diamond papers and a mix of cotton and linen fabrics.
Sheri Cifaldi-Morrill – Last week I had a blast teaching two sessions of my Beyond Hexies and Diamonds: The A to Z of EPP (English Paper Piecing) at QuiltCon 2020 in Austin, Texas. Before heading down to Austin, I prepared samples to share in class as I demonstrated the different steps. Take a peek behind the scenes, including some of my favorite products to use for EPP like Aurifil cotton thread!
Lucy Engels – Experimenting with Clamshell EPP pieces and talking about my design development process.
Ange Hamilton – Using 1-inch jewel papers I made Liberty fabric blossoms. The blossoms were stitched together using 50wt in 2600. I plan on hand quilting the panel with Aurifil thread in 12wt and then turn it into a cushion cover.
Becca Plymale– I love hexie quilts but done have the patience for such a huge project. I had this idea to use hexies as an appliqué to this dress and love how it turned out.
Lucy Brennan – Joseph’s Coats blocks, traditional blocks made with modern fabrics and currently a work in progress. My blog posts discusses how I chose the layout, using Paper Pieces templates with the papers and how I sew curves.
Elaina Sabado – My pick for this fantastic challenge was the curvalicious block pattern “Unnamed” by the lovely Courtney Reed of @sewthishappened This was my first time sewing the curves on an EPP project but the pattern directions and tips were excellent. The substantial size of the paper pieces for this fairly large-scaled block made for fun fussy-cutting opportunities and a lot of awesome quilty real estate. Definitely have more of these blocks planned on the horizon!
Jennie Pickett – The February Aurifil Artisan Challenge was English Paper Piecing. I love stitching with Aurifil 80wt because I feel like my stitches almost disappear, and I love the range of colors! I was excited to work with Paper Pieces as well, because they have so many shapes and acrylic templates to go with them (I always choose the 3/8″ seam allowance so I don’t have to be quite as careful when basting).
Kristina Brinkerhoff – As an EPP beginner, I wanted to make a fun shape, but wasn’t really sure where to start. Jess from Paper Pieces got me going with the shapes I needed for this fun flower. It was so enjoyable to do some slow stitching with Aurifil 80wt and watch my rainbow come together.
Eliane – A soft fabric ball toy for my miniature poodle Riley! I fussy cut a ton of fabric to make this fun and bright ball, which is English Paper Pieced with 50 weight thread.
Karen O’Connor – I made one of the popular Brimfield Blocks from Brimfield Awakening and Paper Pieces. Using 80wt and 50wt Aurifil Thread with Liberty of London Tawna Lawn made for a successful combo.
Faith Essenburg– Finished pillow! The pattern is #winterbloomsquilt from @brimfieldawakening fabrics are from @ava_and_neve threads are @aurifilthread 80 weight in 2309 for EPP and 40 weight 2024 for quilting and appliqué. Such a fun way to brighten up a room and make things feel fresh! Also got me back into English Paper Piecing. 🥰
We hope that our artisans have inspired you to try your hand at doing English Paper Piecing! Be sure to visit our friends at Paper Pieces and see all the gorgeous patterns and shapes that can bring your EPP dreams to life. 😍
I constructed a basic 1″ hexagon Grandmother’s Flower Garden. The 90″ x 90″ quilt took forever doing it the old fashioned way, but these blocks are far more complicated and beautiful. Using the glue really does speed things up. It cannot be done anywhere however. We learn and try new things as we get older!
Beautiful piecing!
I am fascinated with EPP and these are some of the best examples I have seen.
I constructed a basic 1″ hexagon Grandmother’s Flower Garden. The 90″ x 90″ quilt took forever doing it the old fashioned way, but these blocks are far more complicated and beautiful. Using the glue really does speed things up. It cannot be done anywhere however. We learn and try new things as we get older!