Welcome to the 3rd week post of the 52 weeks of hot pads / quilted pot holders.
Here are the list of past week’s posts in this 52 Weeks of Hot Pads Challenge:
I thought it would be a great challenge for me to do a pot holder a.k.a hot pads every single week of 2019.
I am planning on having it displayed in my kitchen. They make great decor don’t they?
While I am at it, I am going to be sharing with you a simple tutorial on the process.
Welcome to the second week post of the 52 weeks of hot pads / quilted pot holders.
Click HERE to my first post.
I thought it would be a great challenge for me to do a pot holder a.k.a hot pads every single week of 2019.
I am planning on having it displayed in my kitchen. They make great decor don’t they?
While I am at it, I am going to be sharing with you a simple tutorial on the process.
Welcome to my first post of the 52 weeks of hot pads / quilted pot holders.
I am a little late for kicking this off as the first week of 2019 has already just flown by.
But… I did make this hot pad in the first week. Was just a little late on posting it out on the blog as I am currently having a little bit of technical difficulties behind the scene. Forgive me then if you are going to see me posting two hot pads in a week sometimes.
Anyway,
I thought it would be a great challenge for me to do a pot holder a.k.a hot pads every single week of 2019.
I am planning on having it displayed in my kitchen. They make great decor don’t they?
While I am at it, I am going to be sharing with you a simple tutorial on the process.
It is such a frustration when you are having fun quilting away and suddenly you realized that you’ve actually quilted folds and pleats on the backing.
Or even more frustrating: you suddenly come across an area with a bubbly puffy surface on the quilt top with no way to ease the puff away except to just quilt it down.
Which resulted in some unintended folds of fabrics, which is pretty annoying (mostly this annoys only the maker, sometimes enough to discourage a maker to just stop and stall.)
This problem may only happen to those quilting on their domestic machine as the quilt is not stretched flat like the long arm frame (makes us wish we had a long arm or the frame – right?) but no sweat, I have the solution for it.
Honestly, I have been there. Many, many times. But now I’ve discovered a technique that works well for me on how to avoid it from happening.
I’ll share this very technique with you in this post. I hope that’ll you find it helpful the next time you are attempting free motion quilt on your domestic machine.
I’d like to share with you in this post some of the ways that you can stitch together your basted English Paper Piecing blocks. Be it hexagons, diamonds or even square or any shape possible really :).
This is following the series of English Paper Piecing Technique I have previously on the blog:
5 Ways How to Baste English Paper Piecing Templates
How to Cut English Paper Piecing Printable Templates
I’d like to share with you in this post some of the ways that you can stitch together your basted English Paper Piecing blocks. Be it hexagons, diamonds or even square or any shape possible really 🙂
Yes, EPP isn’t limited to the conventional shape. Check out these awesome EPP projects with non-common shapes if you are into diving in EPP adventures.
There are a couple of well-known ways to baste English paper piecing templates.
While there are no right or wrong, I’d like to point out some of the pros and cons of the template basting techniques based on my thoughts (some may have a different opinion). So in this post let’s go through a couple of methods of basting english paper piecing pieces.
If you haven’t tried English Paper Piecing (EPP for short), it is a form of patchwork done with paper templates basted to the fabric to keep the fabric in shape. It is suitable for lots of different shapes that fit like a puzzle. Mostly these are geometrical shapes which can be stitched together into beautiful shapes and mandalas. You can see some example in this post.
If you have been EPP-ing quite a while, let me know which one is your favorite basting technique and why. If you have a different way than the one I have mentioned, share it with us, please…
There are affiliate links provided in this post for your convenience. I may earn a small commission when you purchase at NO cost to you. Please find my full disclosure here.
This is one of the first methods I tried when I started EPP. I like a couple of things about this method, but in the end, I find it too much of a hassle to remove the paper.
Basting simply means you can just do a running stitch punching through the fabrics and paper around the templates. You can see an example of this in the stripey hexagon in the center of the photo above.
The benefit of this method is that the paper is securely attached to the fabric. This makes it wonderful for securing it while finishing all around each side. Particularly important when fussy cutting and you want the paper template to be in the exact position.
Pros: Easy quick basting stitch. Secures paper well to fabric.
Cons: May leave stitch holes on the surface. Need to remove the basting stitches then the paper.
This one is my favorite basting technique as I don’t like removing paper and this method makes that step easier and I can re-use my templates.
Here is a brief tutorial on how to stitch baste only the corners:
This is one of the common ways modern EPP-ers are rocking it. It is fast, quick, and easy to baste.
The question that people always ask about this method is all type of glue stick okay?
Honestly, I don’t find any difference in the specific glue stick or the regular glue stick your kids use. The only difference is probably the size of the tip and the blue colour makes it easy to see.
I have great success with the cheap purple glue stick before.
I find that the cheaper the glue stick is probably best as it doesn’t stick so well and makes it easy to remove the paper later.
Here is a video of me glue basting:
However, with the glue stick basting method, I do find that removing the paper will not be as easy as removing it if I were to stitch baste (on the fabric only, not paper). But it is not too bad either.
Here is a video of me removing the paper from glue basted pieces:
Pros: fast, easy to get. Portable.
Cons: Costly (if using the EPP exclusive glue stick). A little bit of work when removing the paper later. Can be sticky and messy.
Have you heard or seen this one?
I love the idea of it but it looks a bit tedious that I haven’t even got time to try it myself.
Here is a video of the how-to.
I am thinking that a regular cheap paintbrush with a cup of starch or even easier, try this brush pen. Fill it in with starch water and starch away. Easy and clean.
Pros: No need to remove paper! The solid crease line can guide sewing better. Cheaper as compared to the EPP gluestick.
Cons: Not so portable as it requires ironing. And you may need to buy those mini iron if you don’t have one yet. Need electrical port unless your iron works on battery.
Well, this one wouldn’t be so paper-y would it? Shall we still call it English paper piecing then? It is similar to the idea of the EPP technique, so we’ll keep it here as another option.
This technique uses a fusible fleece as the templates as opposed to papers. These fusible have to be cut into the shape of the EPP pieces required and basted to the fabric using the fusible glue on the fleece. The fusible sides are activated to stick once heated using the iron.
Basically, you will have to fold the fabric edges and iron them to stick to the fusible fleece.
I haven’t tried this one yet, but the thought of having to carefully iron on the edges scares me and I feel like it is too much work. But it might be worth a try. I am thinking that with these, you may not need to remove the fusible fleece at all. They are soft enough to be in a quilt.
Pros: No need to remove the paper. No messy glue residue.
Cons: Cost. Need to cut out fleece shapes. Need ironing. Not so portable. Fleece can be a little too soft to create sharp edges.
Drop a comment and let us know how you baste you EPP pieces. We’d love to hear them.
Or if you have a tip on how to do either of them, share them too, please 🙂 I know you are all full of wisdom.
Related Post:
What do you do while your hands are at EPP? Listen to audible books? If you have not tried audible, here is a link to try it out for free and you get two books to start with. Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks
If you are not the book type, how about some movies on HBO. I love movie time while stitching! Get a free trial on amazon here. [Join HBO Free Trial
Don’t forget to save this post! Click the save button or pin one of these images on your Pinterest board.
Now, there is a couple of options for you to get english paper piecing templates and today I am sharing with you, one of the most accessible ways to prep them is to cut them by yourself.
I designed the templates on the computer so that it is rotary cut friendly, print them out and cut them using the rotary cutter.
You can choose a couple of different size hexagon templates in TLMC resource library. Sign up here if you haven’t yet.
I find that this is the easiest way for me to get quick templates and easy for me to keep adding more if I need them.
However, there are other ways to cut these templates yourself and you might find yourself loving one method more than the other. Of course, each technique will have its own advantages and disadvantages. Let me walk you through some of them.
There are affiliate links in this post for your convenience. Please find my full disclosure here.
If you are new to free motion quilting, you will most likely encounter some of these free motion quilting problems listed here. Hopefully, this guide will benefit you, allowing you to enjoy the most of the free motion quilting process.
If you are a free motion quilting beginner and would love more help,
I am passionate about free motion quilting and I have been quilting all my quilts on my domestic machines. As I go from projects to projects, I have learned a lot from mistakes, trials, and errors.
Hence, I would love to share with you some of the things that I learned throughout my experience and ways to solve some of the common free-motion quilting problems that I have encountered.
I want you to enjoy most of your quilting time rather than worrying about these free motion quilting problems.
In this post, I will be sharing with you a simple tutorial how to free motion quilt feathers and examples of feather quilting. While there are many ways to go about quilting feathers, the method I am going to teach in this post is one of the methods that I have found that works for me in order to create those organic looking feathers with practically boundless possibility.
I am joining Sewcial Bee Sampler, a sampler sew-along hosted and designed by the talented Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell, which is already running beginning of February and will be finishing in August. You can find out more about the schedule here or here.
We are already onto our 4th block out of 25 blocks all together. So far, I really enjoyed making the block and the sew-along. The instructions were clear and the design of the finished quilt really looks amazing. I even have mine planned with their free colouring page. Well, the final might look a little different than my plan but I pretty much will have the colours scheme like planned.
While taking photos of the blocks I already made together, the idea to quilt it as I go struck me. I was also refreshing my old blogpost which had me revisiting my old quilt-along back in 2013 here. In that quilt along, I have included tutorials for blocks and free-motion quilting each block. At the end of that quilt-along, I ended up with a beautiful quilt that I cherish till now – although it was a little small, it made a perfect wall hanging. I totally love the idea of having different backing which made the quilt reversible too!
Now, for this Sewcial Bee Sampler, I planned to do something similar! And I thought, why not I include a tutorial as well along as I quilt-along my blocks! So, if you want to join along, make sure you follow along Sewcial Bee Sampler Sew-along and come here to quilt each block together!This is only optional – Sharon and Maureen will have a how to piece and quilt them at the end of the sew-along. I just feel like quilting as I go because I want to custom quilt it and have the quilt done quicker and on the spot ready to use at the end of the sew-along.
I am going to give a tutorial on how to custom quilt them and also include a simple quilting instruction for those who are beginners, who may want to try out Quilt As You Go (QAYG) technique but not so ready to do custom quilting. So basically, I will be doing two quilts – one with simple quilting and another with custom quilting on it. You can follow either one, depending on your confidence level and your commitment.
I am a big fan of custom quilting but realise that it is not easy to do custom quilting on large quilt with a domestic machine!
So, I find that quilt as you go (QAYG) technique is perfect for that matter.
If you have been wanting to learn free-motion quilting with your own domestic machine, this IS definitely the time. We are going to work with small blocks (12.5″ square) which make the whole thing more manageable but still gives you that experience you need to improve your free-motion quilting skills!
[bctt tweet=”Custom quilting on domestic machine is made easy, using a Quilt As You Go technique” username=”amira_lilmushroomcap”]
If you are already in the Sewcial Bee Sampler Sew-along, you can get ready basting your quilt blocks in three layers as we are going to start quilting in a couple more days. You can also go to this post to have an idea how we are going to join the blocks together.
You can baste as following : (I prefer 
Quilt block on a 13.5″ square 
If you haven’t jumped on the Sewcial Bee Sampler sew-along bandwagon – make sure you drop by here or here and download all the patterns and get sewing! We still have about 20 Weeks to go, so don’t worry, you are not yet late to the party. Even if you are late, I think Sharon and Maureen will still have those pattern up for sometime later to the sew-along and my post here will remain, so you still can sew and quilt at your own pace.
I will update in a few days with the first instruction on how to quilt the first 2 blocks! In the meantime, get basting and keep updated. Drop a comment down below or on my Instagram if you are interested to follow along or if you have any questions! I am all excited to start and hopefully, you are too!
Quilty Hugs,
Amira