Paper Piecing Adventures: Colour Inspiration Tuesday and Link Party

Do you ever go back and revisit quilt ideas?

I often mean to, but it rarely happens. There is always a new quilty squirrel I can chase. But this month I am actually dusting off an old idea and the last of my Island Batik Victoria and Albert fabric scraps for the latest Ambassador challenge. I’ve had a plan for a while, it just needed its turn in the sun.

The Island Batik Ambassador theme for October is paper piecing…. foundation piecing, freezer paper piecing or English paper piecing….. our choice. Generally, I would say that I enjoy the former two much more than the latter. But…..

• I have pre-cut scraps from the beautiful Island Batik Victoria and Albert fabrics that would lend themselves to English paper piecing and need using up.
• I still want to explore the idea of organza wings for dragonfly appliqués that I mentioned some time back.
• And I want to try out the aluminium (aluminum) foil method of turning fabric edges…. (with more of a view to appliqué in the future, but these things are interrelated). OK – so this is kind of “old project becomes new squirrel”, but whatever works……. 🙂

English paper piecing it is!

Let me show you what I think of using foil for preparing turned edges. Spoiler alert: It’s pretty awesome!

The Backstory

After I finished “Shimmer Light, Shimmer Flight” back in August, I had a small pile of hexies leftover from the lattice piecing because I had designed and made this quilt largely on the fly…… or should that be “on the dragonfly”…….?  🙂 Anyway, in the beginning I wasn’t even entirely sure what size this quilt was going to be, so I cut two WOF strips into hexies for each fabric. Then I allocated the hexies to the blocks semi-randomly, with the only rule being four different fabrics per block. And when I was done I had these left over.

Not being one for batik wastage, I earmarked them for this month’s project. Because, although I had made the original blocks by appliquéing in the green centres, I could have also used Y-seams or paper piecing to construct the same thing.

Converting my pattern to paper piecing

Actually, I hardly had to do anything to change this pattern to a paper pieced affair. The cutting template I had for the original hexies and square centre were also already perfect for paper piecing. All I did was make fresh templates from 2 layers of freezer paper. I did number them in case they weren’t 100% symmetrical (which having being  drafted by me, they are not quite).

Trying a new technique

One of the reasons I don’t do English paper piecing is the time and frustration of all the preparation. All those little bits that have to be basted before they can be sewn together! Gaghkkkk! I have tried all sorts of cheats and products, never to any satisfaction. Slow sewing is currently not for me.

But in discussions around turned-edge appliqué a while back, Denise T mentioned using aluminium foil to turn the edges of appliqués in a discussion on my Facebook page. Thanks Denise! I had never heard of this before, but when I looked into it, I immediately knew I was going to try it. And since paper pieced parts need turned edges too…. this was my first opportunity!

All I had to do was add some centre square pieces to my pile of  hexie scraps and I have enough pieces cut to make a pillow cover to match my daughter’s new quilt. Which is good, because I have next to nothing else left from this fabric line now!

How to use starch, foil and Elmer’s glue to (QUICKLY) make turned-edge paper piecing pieces (and appliqué pieces too!)

I like this method. Actually, I like it a lot. It’s fast and successful. That’s rare!

Step 1

Cut all your fabric pieces with seam allowances and fuse to your freezer paper templates.

Step 2

Turn your fabric pieces over, fabric side up. Spray with a little spray starch.

Turn back over and place template side up onto a piece of cooking foil.

Step 3

Gently fold the seam allowances over the template using the foil. With a bit of gentle pressure you can easily get the fabric to follow the shape of the template.

The foil holds beautifully in shape, there is no tricky business!

Once the edges are all folded over, iron both sides with a hot iron. Please remember that the foil will hold the heat longer than fabric does!

Step 4

Make another one while you are waiting for the first one to cool. Otherwise you will burn your fingers with impatience! Ask me how I know…. haha

Step 5

Gently unwrap your fabric piece and template. The fabric edges should mostly stay folded over and are probably sufficiently prepared for appliqué like this. However, they are not strong enough yet to withstand the sewing process of paper piecing. I found this out through too much optimism…..

This can be really easily fixed though! Add a tiny dob of Elmer’s washable school glue to strategic places like the corners. Dry the Elmer’s glue with a hot iron. Is there anything quilty that Elmer’s Glue can’t improve??!!

Step 6

Repeat until you have all your pieces ready.

Then take them somewhere relaxing and sew them together. This is me last night, hand sewing at the pool while the kids had their first swimming lesson of the season.

All done. Actually this is my second unit. The first one took longer and didn’t work out so well because I didn’t think to deploy the Elmer’s glue. The folks at Island Batik probably had burning ears at what I thought about being forced to paper piece this month while I was fighting with it. But now that it is going together easily, I could see how this could get addictive……..

 

Now all I have to do is finish a few more for my cushion (pillow). I need eight for the front. I also have three orphan units from the original quilt with appliquéd centres, which I will use up on the back of the cushion. And I will add a dragonfly. Another post for another day, when I get that far. 

In the meantime I have a project to take with me to my kids’ activities this week. 🙂 I hope you found this little tutorial helpful. I have added this method to my personal list of favourite tricks!

Hopefully here you can see the difference between the appliquéd unit (bottom green square in picture above) versus the paper pieced unit on top of it. Both have 2 layers of fabric in the seam line around the green squares, but because of the construction method they sit differently. Neither is right or wrong. they are just different. Different effects and different speeds. 

Last Week’s Feature

Last week’s party was more of a tea-for-two than a rave, with only Andrée from Quilting and Learning showing up to sup with the Chameleon. I hope that just means the weather was too awesome for indoor parties. No matter, Andrée brought the Beatles, so we had a good ole time anyway. 🙂

Head over to Andrée’s post to find out more about her cool Beatles wallhanging quilt.

Then….

Link up to the Chameleon’s  Linky Party this week and show us your projects

What are you working on, or have recently finished in your sewing room? Link up a blog post, a Flicker pic, an IG post or simply a photo from your computer.  See if you can get the Chameleon to turn quilted with happiness. We’d love to see your quilting colours.

Guidelines (more detail here):

• Link up your latest or recent quilt excitement. All construction stages welcome – even fabric pulls!
• You have 100 characters in the link description…. tell us who you are and what your fantastic project is.
• URLs are not necessary to link up…. non-bloggers 100% welcome! If you don’t have a URL, simply link up with just a photo. 
• Do it now……. before you forget and the Chameleon has to party alone 🙁

[inlinkz_linkup id=802456 mode=1]

I’m not trying to get rid of you, but since it is time to wrap this post up anyway……

Did you see that EQ has a 72-hour 20% off sale on all EQ8 books on their site? Well, they do.. But, because you are my friend, you can go one better. You can have 20% off anything EQ, including the EQ8 software until 23rd October 2018! This is actually thanks to Marian of Seams to be Sew, who organised you this discount code: STBSRA20. 

See, it is still who you know! 🙂 Excludes EQ Academy. These are not affiliate links – they are just in case you are interested.

And if you like random trivia, here is an interesting summary of why aluminium is called aluminum in the US.  Enjoy!

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Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest or FB. All your follow options can be found here. Don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour Inspiration Linky parties! And if you’d like to road test my newest patterns, I am always on the hunt for keen pattern testers.

The Chameleon turns rainbow with pleasure when he hears from you. I am more reserved, so I will respond in gratitude by email instead. Now that it’s your turn…. Scroll right to the end, leave me a comment and tell me, what do you think? Thanks for connecting!