Last Saturday I attended the February workshop for the Embroiderers' Guild Certificate Course, this time on English Paper Piecing with Melissa Walker.
Melissa provided a choice of projects - both pincushions: one hexagons, the other mixed shapes. Because I had paper-pieced the bed quilt in hexagons three years ago, I chose to work on the mixed shapes. We began with a sheet of template shapes on heavy paper to be cut out, then cut our fabric and glued the fabric shapes around the paper. This is the first time I have used glue to secure the fabric to the papers. It was a lot of fun.
Left to my own devices I'd have tried to glue down the little tails on the diamonds but they fit neatly together under each other.
I was using a couple of small squares of hand-dyed fabric I bought at a market day. It gave me plenty of scope for mixing colours within a palette. This was a well designed project. The diamonds form the top of the pincushion, rectangles the sides and a hexagon the bottom.
It was, as always, a great group of students, sharing their work and encouraging each other. Melissa was an attentive and knowledgeable teacher. This was pretty much where I got to when the class finished at 2pm.
At home I added the hexagon and joined up the sidesbefore removing the papers.
I had had a great day, learned the skills of glueing papers and managing diamond corners - and ended up with a finished product.
Niamh's take on this? "If you don't want to be a Nana you have to stick your pins into one of these, otherwise you stick them in lounges and things".
Oh dear, I'm very much guilty as charged I'm afraid!
4 comments:
love EPP but have done little other than hexies. Not tried the glue method it must be so much quicker, wonder what glue you use. Yes I know about sticking needles and pins into chair arms etc also into my bedhead! What do you stuff with? My original pincushion which is years old I used sawdust and the pins never rust bt not easy to find it now
Thanks Margaret. We used a fabric glue stick - very easy. I stuffed with synthetic fibrefill because I had some to hand. It means it can be washed.
LOL, maybe that's why she's given you two! I can confidently say that although I used to park needles in the sofa, I've trained myself to use a pincushion now. It's one less thing to remember, when the needle is always in the same place! This turned out great, with the fun hand-dyes. I hope Niamh gets lots of use from it!
Thanks Monica. You are my inspiration. My training in pincushion use begins now!
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