Giveaway Time!

I love talking about English paper piecing, and since the book came out, I've had a lot of fun talking to so many quilters and hearing about their EPP projects, goals, or fears.  (Seems lots and lots of people have WIPs..)
Talk is great, but what I really need is time to sit and sew, so I am arranging an EPP quilt retreat in Greece next summer.  I would LOVE it if a bunch of you would join me there.

It's a week-long handwork-only get together at the beautiful Anezina Village Hotel on the island of Paros.  You can read more about it here, or request a registration packet by emailing me (jessunderquilts at yahoo dot com). 
We will play with a bunch of EPP shapes and ideas and get in some good stitching (and relaxation) hanging out poolside, at cafes, at the beach (!), and anywhere else we can find on this picturesque island.  Included is a Greek cooking class, lecture on traditional Greek needlework, and ample time to explore the area.  Registration is open until February 1st and quilters from everywhere are welcome (classes will be taught in English).

In order to get people thinking about the idea (and hopefully deciding to do it!), today I'm offering a giveaway if you help me spread the word about the retreat..
Would you like to win a copy of my book and two packs of English paper piecing templates?

To enter, do any (or all) of the following:
1.  Blog about the retreat and giveaway (go ahead and borrow the images in this post!), then come back and leave a comment with the link to your blog post.
2.  Find me on Instagram (@jessica_alex) and regram the giveaway pic with the tag #greekislandquiltretreat
3.  Post about the retreat/giveaway on Facebook with a link to this post, then come back and comment that you did.

I'll choose a winner on November 25th.
The giveaway and the retreat are open to everyone.  Thanks for helping me get the word out!
Good luck!!

Monday Morning Star Count 7

*big sigh*
I guess I've fallen into a routine again because it seems I just catch my breath and it's Monday again!  Huge apologies to everyone who has commented or linked up that I didn't get to reply to this week.. whenever my eyes turn off my kids and towards my phone, they quickly snap me back to attention.  I've had to wait til after bed to spend any real time online or in the sewing room, and I just haven't been able to keep up.  I'll keep trying though.  I LOVE seeing what you all are doing!
As for me..
I finished star #4!

Have you seen the amazing English paper piecing that's been stitched up this summer?  If you're new to the MMSCount, be sure to check out the lovely shades of blue here, here, and here, some yellow, orange and blue over here (one of my favorite color combos), and some crazy tiny hexies over here (and I thought mine were small..)

Now that I've got 4 stars done, I thought I could join them and see my Seven Sisters pattern come into focus, but when I laid them on the floor last night.. a bunch of other layouts started seeming attractive.. so I guess I don't know what I'm going to do yet.  Just keep going, I guess.  3 more stars left.

Oh! And FYI-- My book is on sale at Paperpieces.com this week!  25% off, woohoo!  If you've been waiting to get your copy, now's the time.  Pick up more templates while you're at it~

Monday Morning Star Count 6

It's been a slow week for EPP over here.. I did manage to finish my 3rd star, and baste about 40 more hexies, but I'm not feeling too bad about it.  I pulled out my sewing machine (!!!) and whipped up a comfy, girly, couch quilt for a very special friend and I hope to share pictures of that soon.

I am faithfully bringing my sewing kit with me everywhere still, you never know when someone will take a nap and you'll have a free minute.   This past week I got a lot of basting done at the local pool while George was at swimming lessons..

 

Have you been stitching anywhere fun lately?

Monday Morning Star Count 5

37 tiny hexagons make one star.  Repeat.  And again, and again..
So I'm not that far yet, I don't even have a full star to show this week, but I have news to report-- I need more fabric.

I have basted all of the tiny crumb scraps I had in my sewing kit, and now I need to find more, yay!
I don't have to look far, honestly, but since we've been home I haven't really had time to "play" in the sewing room and things are pretty much the way I left them 7 weeks ago. (I do follow Victoria's tip to never clean/reorganize your studio before a long trip-- makes it easier to remember where you left things)

I'm happy because this means that I'm actually using up my tiny scraps-- some have been sitting here for over 10 years-- and it's always better to see favorite fabrics in a quilt than in a box, right?

How are things progressing at your end?  Anyone else need to replenish your fabric stash yet?

(almost) Wordless Wednesday

I really wanted to be all removed and post just a photo today (which I already posted a few hours ago on Instagram), but then I read this really awesome post, and had to stay true to myself..

I brought my quilting to the beach today and stitched 4 hexies together.  That was enough, then I put it away and ate an entire piece of saganaki with a nice big horiatiki ("greek salad").  I even had some beer.  It was a good day.  I hope to have more of these in the future. 
(and hope that you have some too).

Monday Morning Star Count 3

I have done so many exciting and crafty things in the last week, and I'm dying to blog about them all, but the baby (and inconvenient Wi-Fi range) are complicating things a bit. 
If you follow me on instagram (@jessica_alex) then you may have seen the pics from yesterday's awesome Etsy Craft Party that we had here in Athens.  I want to share all the photos and add in the links to the shops of the very talented crafters I met there, and if I don't do it in the next day or so, someone remind me, will you?  Thanks.  It was fun, but I was the first quilter most of them had ever met, hehe.

In epp progress news-- my Rain hexies aren't finished yet-- there's less than an hour of stitching left to assemble them all, but I don't have any basting spray with me here and I got caught up in a new project so.. (yep, that's just how I do things.  work on whatever holds my attention for as long as it lasts..)
I started making stars out of tiny hexagons:

I finished one (above) and started on a second (below).  I want to make 7 stars and then figure out how to put them together, so I've got 6 and a half to go~

Are you all still working on the same projects or have you been bad like me and have jumped around?  No judging here!  Just link up and tell us your progress.

Monday Morning Star Count 2

Good morning~
How's the stitching going?

I have a bit of progress to show.. 
My Rain pouch project now has 52 hexies and 8 half hexies, and you can see I've got the rest laid out and ready to sew.

The bottom 3 rows aren't attached yet, with two hexies left to baste.  Of course, as luck would have it, I ran out of paper templates with one hexagon to go.. I need to stitch the rows on and free one up to continue.
If you find yourself in a similar predicament, don't fret!  Paperpieces.com has their 4th of July sale up already with free shipping on all US orders and free shipping on International orders over $70.  Never run out of templates again~

Browsing pictures of EPP online, I see a lot of people just baste and baste and baste.  Beautiful pictures of 100s of pretty hexagons in boxes, stacks, piles.  Are you that type of quilter?  Me, I prefer to reuse templates, and stitch them together as soon as possible.  On star quilts, I often make one star at a time.  BUT, I have found that having extra templates basted gives you much more freedom in "random-ish" design placement options.  Even in this Rain hexie piece.. having a bunch of the fabrics basted let me play around with arrangement a couple of times before settling on this not-quite-arbitrary layout.  How do you play as you're sewing?  Link up below and tell us.

Monday Morning Star Count

I've been talking to some friends about starting up a weekly EPP Tally to help us make a dent in those long-term hand piecing projects.  Lots and lots of people are very close to finishing quilt tops, and others have just started, but I think a little friendly encouragement in the form of a weekly linky will do us all some good.

I'm calling it the Monday Morning Star Count, but you don't have to be working on a diamond star quilt to join up.  If you want to play, just take a photo of your current EPP project and upload it to flickr or write a blog post about it, and link that url in the linky below.  Be sure to tally up how many units (stars, sprockets, flowers, Tanukis, etc.) you have done already and how many more you have to go. 
This month I've been slowly working away at my rain hexies and I have decided to make them into a zipper pouch like this one. 

I have 33 hexies and 4 half hexies joined already.  I also have a piece of 9 hexies joined that are ready to be added to the whole.  I need a total of 72 hexies and 10 half hexies.  So this means I've got 39 hexies and 6 half hexies to go~ 

When you make your tally, you can choose how you want to count things-- by row, by star, by flower, etc.  You choose if you want to count only what's added to the whole or count all of the units you've got ready.. you know me, I'm pretty free like that (not a fan of rules, hehe).  So, who's ready?

Moda Honeycombs for EPP

Have you seen the pre-cut hexagons in fabric shops?  Seeing as hexies are all the rage (and have been for some time now it seems), it really isn't surprising that manufacturers have started laser cutting them for our convenience.  Moda makes nice stacks called Honeycombs.  You get 40 per pack and they measure 3" per side.  They come with a piece of template plastic with holes to mark seam allowance, which is great if you plan to stitch them by machine, but I took one look and had other plans..

Moda was nice enough to send me some Honeycombs to play with and today I'm going to share a little tutorial for how to use the Honeycomb pre-cuts for English paper piecing.

A Honeycomb can be cut into the following EPP shapes and sizes:
2" equilateral triangles
2" 60-degree diamonds
1" (short side) kites
2" half hexagons

Depending on the seam allowance you prefer, you can change them up a bit to suit your comfort level.
I happen to be a huge fan of 60 degree diamonds, and if you cut up a Honeycomb, your diamonds come out to exactly 2 5/8" high-- perfect to baste around a 2" template.

So let's cut  some.
First, layer two print Honeycombs.

 Next, place the plastic hexie template (the one that comes with the fabric) so that 1/3 of the hexagon is covered.  Carefully align the corners.

 Here you've got two options-- either draw a line around the template and cut with scissors, or go at it with a rotary cutter (carefully though, a fresh blade can slice through the template plastic)

 

 Your cut may go a bit further than necessary, but that's not really a big deal.  Slide the cut diamonds out of the way, reposition the template, and cut again.

Now you have 6 cute diamonds, ready to baste to your EPP templates.

 The next step is to secure fabric to your templates with paper clips.

Fold in and baste around the edges with 5 backstitches, taking additional bites of fabric along each side.  Do not stitch through the template paper!

Whipstitch your diamonds into a star!

I'm going to turn these into a pillow.  What can you make with Moda Honeycombs and EPP?

Check out my book for more pattern ideas, and get ready to stitch outside this summer!

And so concludes the Quilting on the Go Blog tour.  Thanks to all the great bloggers who participated and thanks to you all for travel stitching with us~  If you haven't already, head over to Lucy's blog to enter the giveaway and don't forget to use the 20% off coupon UNDER20 at Paperpieces.com!

(p.s. this tutorial is cross posted at Moda's Cutting Table and Potter Craft's Crafternews, make sure to pop over there too and say hi~)

Travel inspiration and Laura of Quokka Quilts

Last fall, Laura did this great blog hop where you took color inspiration from photographs and then made EPP projects from them. (you can see my post here)

I played around with a lot of photos to try to get colors I wanted to work with before cutting into my fabric (I think that's not what she intended, but it was fun anyway).. here is one from our trip to Paros last year:

  

 Greece has really great color inspiration, don't you think?  If only I had time to stitch all the quilts I'm inspired to make..

The blog tour continues over at Quokka Quilts today.  Hop over there to read more about how Laura travels with her EPP.

Cover Girl

Nicole sent me this photo earlier this week and gave me permission to share it.  This is the quilt Nicole is stitching on the cover of my book, and here it is all completed and it looks like it gets a lot of use too!  (I know, hard to focus on the quilt when there's such an adorable little girl sitting on it)

Is there anything better than seeing a picture of a quilt you made being used?  Actually becoming a part of someone else's daily life?  I once got a Christmas card with an entire family sitting on the couch and one of my quilts peaking out from beneath them at the corner.  Best. Card. Ever.

The Blog Tour continues over at Crazymomquilts today.  Hope you are enjoying all this talk about EPP, I know I am.

Becky teaches EPP

(This post could also have been called "why I have the coolest friends in the world")

This week my old college roommate was visiting from the UK and so a few of our old housemates got together for some girl time (and baby cuddling).  The baby was sweet and took a nice long nap, so after I popped dinner in the oven, we all sat around the living room and chatted about things.  Not surprisingly (or uncommon in my house and in my current circle of friends), Becky was stitching and chatting and talk turned to quilting. 

 Now Rachel and Trish aren't quilters (yet), so understandably they had a lot of questions.  Before I could answer any, Becky jumped down and started pulling out sprockets and templates... it was great.  Usually I'm the one going on obsessively about EPP, but not this time!

Becky is making a Sprocket quilt, from Christina's tutorial and quilt along.  She started it just a few weeks ago and already has 4 done, with a 5th nearly ready.

Her background is light light grey and the colored rings are monochrome but scrappy.  The two non-quilters were intrigued enough to follow us up to the sewing room for me to give Becky some extra 1.5" diamond templates, but when she and I started pawing through the scrap bin looking for more fabrics, we kinda lost them (oh well).  Still, it was really energizing to watch someone talk about quilting so passionately.  I can completely appreciate that-- she's in the thick of a new project and loving it.  I'm loving it for her too.

Oh, and as you can see from her blog, Becky's a veterinarian, so her stitches are immaculate!  I wish she had time to blog more about quilting (nudge, nudge), but until then, I'll do it for her, hehe.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival-- Tanuki Stripe

It wasn't any fun to miss out on the Bloggers' Quilt Festival last year-- I was making great quilts but needed to keep them under wraps, but now I'm happy to share!

This is my Tanuki Stripe quilt, one of the patterns available in my book.

I love this quilt.  I made it as a wedding present for my friends Amy & Jake, but since I got it back from the publisher I haven't had a chance to give it to them.  Maybe soon (though I almost want to keep it)?
You must forgive me for the less-than-glamorous cellphone camera photos.  The photography in the book is really lovely and I've gotten used to seeing my quilts either in person or in the beautiful clear and stylishly composed book photos.  I'm almost ashamed to post such low-quality pictures, but then I remember that I'm a quilter, not a photographer.  This is a real quilt, with blood, sweat, tears and wrinkles.  Made with love for a friend who is a part of so many of my most favorite memories.  I hope you'll understand.

The quilt measures 55" x 70".  There's a big bold strip of hand pieced English paper piecing flanked by panels of quiet neutrals (pieced by machine).   The EPP part is made of 4-piece units: two squares and two 60 degree diamonds.  This unit has so much design potential!  I want to play around with it some more if I get some free time.
I quilted it with wavy lines on my Janome and bound it in an off-white polka dot.  The backing fabric was a UFO that wasn't going anywhere and I'm happy to have finally found a place for it.

I'm entering this in the "Throw Quilts" category (I wish it could go in the "home machine quilted" category, but my photos don't do it justice).  I'm glad I could participate in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival.  Have you entered a quilt yet?

 (p.s. if you try out this pattern, I'd love to see it!)

Hexie Pillow

I'm so happy to share a finish today~
This is the first sizeable project that I started and finished in 2013. 

(I have been working on a bunch of long-term big quilts in my poorly lit sewing room that I'd love to post about, but the window of opportunity to get good photos is so small... I'll keep trying)
This is the Hexagon pillow project from my book (see below) and I made this one to be raffled off at a promo event my publisher is going to next week.  The pattern is amazingly simple and a great one to start with if you want to give EPP a try.  I also think pillows are a good option when you want to try out a new EPP shape or pattern but you're not ready to commit to a whole quilt (or just end up with another UFO).  I'm itching to test out some other pattern ideas myself..

For this pillow I chose a color palette and then pulled fabric from my stash.  It may seem a little "patriotic", but you've got to forgive me, I was watching West Wing on Netflix at the time..
 There's a mix of new and old-- Salt Air, Laura Gunn, old Japanese import whales, a blue floral I bought at Joann's in college, and some vintage florals (the white hexie in the bottom right of the above pic must have been a shirt or something-- silky cotton but a really tight weave-- hell to stitch through!). 
I quilted intersecting diagonal lines in blue perle cotton, with 1/4" tape as a guide.

And in related news,


it's here!!

My advanced copies have arrived and I'm in the process of packaging them up and shipping them off to the lovely quilters who contributed to the project.  (Earamichia, Bernadette, Clare, Lesly-- check your mailboxes soon~~).  I've also been showing it off to anyone who will listen, isn't that terrible!?  But I piece at the local library while George is at StoryTime, and the librarians are always asking me about what I'm making so... it's great to finally be able to show them.
(The receptionists and nurses at my OB's office were happy to see it too, they'd heard quite a lot about it during my pregnancy..)

The book cover has hexies, and there's a hexie pillow project inside (along with a couple other hexie projects), but I want to reassure you-- the book is not just about hexagons!  I know it's just a tease, but the quilt the book is lying on-- my Travel Quilt #3, that's in there too, as well as some combo-shape projects.  Can't believe it will be on shelves next month already (and sooner in the UK!).  If you see it out there, please let me know~

March 28

As the weather gets warmer and Jack gets bigger, we are slowly venturing out of our nest..
I'm reluctant to leave the comforts of home though, and still many friends are coming to us instead of vice versa (sometimes regretfully, as I wasn't brave enough to meet up with Nifty as she took in the sights around NYC!). 
Last weekend though we were treated to a much appreciated visit from Bernadette.  After an attempt  to go out with the boys (it was quite disastrous), we headed home.  As I gave George a bath, Bernadette played with my pile of hexies and started piecing..

When George was done, he decided to help.

I love that he feels all of my friends come over just to play with him.  (And I am grateful that my friends indulge him).  After stitching for a while, we went outside to play soccer and he made obstacle courses for us to practice through.  Ha!  I wonder how soon he'll figure out that I have absolutely no soccer skills.. we had fun trying though.
I have spent the rest of the week working to finish what Bernadette started.  I don't know what it is, but I just can't get enough of these hexies..

  

***Thank you all so much for your enthusiasm about my book.  Once it arrives I'll give you a peak inside..

My Big Secret

You may have thought that making a baby was the biggest thing I did last year (and the reason for my insomnia and introspection), but that's only half the story. 

Today I'm happy to announce that I wrote a book:

It will be released on June 11, 2013, but it is available for pre-order from these retailers and hopefully at a quilt shop or book store near you!

It's no secret that I've been obsessed with English paper piecing for about 6 years now.. I started piecing a few 60 degree diamonds on a plane to Japan in '07 and I was hooked. 
 My book explains my method of EPP with step-by-step photos, tips, tricks and detailed instructions to make 10 projects.  It also has a collection of nearly 40 EPP pattern designs to spark your creativity, and (my favorite part of the book) 10 full pages of photo-copyable graph paper for you to plan out your next project. 

I am so excited to finally be able to share this all with you.  I hope you'll join me in my love for English paper piecing and quilting practically everywhere~