English Paper Piecing

 A few weeks ago I was privileged to attend a talk by Betsy Chutchian (Book - Gone to Texas) at my local quilt store.  Her family had moved to Texas in the 1800's and a member of the family had kept a journal.  In the journal she mentioned the quilts she was making.  Betsy turned all these memories into real quilts and she had them with her to show us.  What an interesting morning.  Such beautiful quilts too.  One quilt which really spoke to me was a hexagon quilt (grandmothers flower garden).  I decided I simply had to make one.  I decided to use the English Paper Piecing Method.  I love it because it is so accurate.  I draw my templates onto freezer paper which I then iron onto the back of the fabric.  While basting, the template paper does not move at all which is a help in getting your individual hexagons to be the same size.

 My sweet cat had to come and supervise what I was doing, and since he looked so sweet I had to put a picture of him onto the blog too.

 These are the "flowers that I have done so far.  Fat quarters work really well for this project.  If you choose two fat quarters, cut 19 hexagons out of each one, you can make two flowers, one with the colors flipped!

The thing which really made this quilt spectacular was the fact that the flowers are bordered with black hexagons.  Betsy quilted within the border of each hexagon using embroidery floss.  It was such a beautiful quilt.  I hope mine will be too!
Wishing you a wonderful day, and thanks for stopping by!
PS The one thing which Betsy found frustrating in trying to figure out what the quilts looked like from the journal was the lack of information about them.  She suggested that if we keep a journal and write about our quilts that we be very specific about what we are working on.  So, remember the details!