A Prairie Home Quilts

I was inspired to start a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt after a visit to our local fiber arts show one year.  The Pahrump Fiber Arts Show is held every year in February.  This particular year there was a stunning GFG quilt done with fabrics in muted colors and gray fabric for the “path” between the flowers.  I wish I had taken a picture of it. I think it was 2005 when I started collecting and cutting fabric squares to cover my homemade 3/4″ hexagon templates so it must have been in 2005 that I saw the GFG quilt at the show.

Through the wonderful world of quilting blogs and the Internet, I’ve learned that there are a couple of techniques and products that would have been good to know about way back before I started cutting my little squares to save in a shoe box and printing my little templates. [sigh] Not that I’m going to scrap my whole project because I’ve started one way and I’ve since learned of a much easier way. But I’ll be using this new method for all other hexagon projects. Anyway I thought maybe I’d do a post about the techniques and products to perhaps help someone else start their GFG off a little easier. And it’s not that one way is “right” and every other way is “wrong” either. Some of the techniques are just simpler and some of the products are time saving.

So here goes. . . First I found a nice source for paper templates at reasonable prices called, Paper Pieces. They have paper templates of all shapes and sizes and frequently have good web specials posted — like FREE shipping. One reason for using pre-cut / die-cut paper templates is to save time cutting them out. Another reason is how much nicer your GFG flowers turn out with perfectly cut shapes.

One other thing I’ve learned that you don’t need to baste *through* the paper templates. (See under “Tutorials” on my sidebar on the left for a link to “Tutorial on English Paper Piecing” for more on this technique.) This technique saves time and money. Paper pieces are reusable but they eventually get a little too beat up to reuse. If you aren’t basting through the templates, they last longer. You save time by not having to remove the basting from around each shape after you join them. I did some of my basting on my GFG Table Topper this way and it was wonderful not having to go back and remove the basting stitches!

One of the products I discovered was Quilt Patis. These are reusable plastic templates. They are a little more pricey than the paper templates but will probably last a lifetime and therefore save you money. Quilt Patis were developed by quilt teacher Pati Shambaugh. At Quilter’s TV there is a video of Pati showing how to cover various kinds of Quilt Patis.  You will have to search for it as I can’t seem to link directly to the video.

Another technique that I’ve seen mentioned is using freezer paper templates. I didn’t explore this technique as I felt the freezer paper would be too flimsy for the way I hold the shapes and whip stitch them together. Most directions tell you to put your shapes right sides together and whip stitch them together. I found it more comfortable and hence quicker to whip stitch if I held my shapes together sort of “tented” instead of right sides flush together. [Picture standing up 2 playing cards into an A-frame tent shape.] That’s how I hold my shapes while I’m whip stitching them.  I also found that my stitches were less likely to show on the front if I did this but it’s probably just me. However, English Paper Piecing was originally done with PAPER so feel free to explore using freezer paper templates if that intrigues you. *smile*

The last product I was introduced to is Inklingo developed by Linda Franz. This product is used to print the shapes directly on the wrong side of your fabric using your inkjet printer! You iron a piece of freezer paper to the right side of your fabric and send it through your printer. Then you can rotary or scissor cut the shapes out and stitch them with a running stitch instead of a whip stitch. A running stitch makes the sewing much faster; and because you don’t have to baste to templates, there is less preparation time. Oh, and Inklingo not only prints the cutting lines; it prints the stitching lines, too! Inklingo is also designed to use a minimal amount of ink so you are not paying a lot to print your shapes. You can do more than print hexagons. Inklingo can even be used for regular piecing methods to make half & quarter square triangles, etc.  There are several shape collections available now with more in the works. There’s even a collection that you can download for FREE to try Inklingo. I’ll probably be posting more about Inklingo in the future, but in the meantime you can see a video of it for yourself here [click on demo video].