There are several ways to stitch the beautiful Patchwork of
the Crosses quilt. Lucy Boston stitched
her quilt by hand using the English Paper Piecing method (using paper shapes), but you can also make the blocks with simple hand piecing (using a
running stitch by hand). I am using the
English Paper Piecing method for my blocks, but hand piecing works equally
well.
English Paper Piecing Method:
Following is a quick lesson on preparing honeycomb
shapes using a glue pen.
Honeycomb
pieces can be made using the traditional method of basting the fabric to the
template shapes, but I find using the glue pen is faster and more accurate. This is especially true when shapes are being
fussy cut – if the fabric on your finished shape doesn’t look like it’s centered correctly, it’s a simple
matter to lift up a glued edge and recenter the paper.
To begin with, I like to punch a hole in the
center of all my paper pieces. This will
allow me to remove the papers with ease later on in the process. One evening of “punching” in front of the television
is all it takes to punch an entire bag of papers. If you purchased the megabags of shapes,
allow several evenings to avoid hand cramps!
Use the acrylic honeycomb template to cut your
fabric. Since the template is just like
any of your other acrylic rulers, you can easily cut the shapes with a rotary
cutter. You may feel more comfortable
using a small rotary cutter rather than a large 60 mm cutter for this since the
acrylic templates are small.
Or, if you’re afraid the template will slide during
cutting, simply trace around the template with a pencil. . .
and cut on the line with an embroidery
scissors.
I use both methods of cutting. . . if the piece is
not fussy cut and can be cut out of a strip of fabric, I use the rotary cutting
method. If the piece requires accurate
placement of the template, as in fussy cutting, I feel more confident using the
trace and scissor cut method.
Once the fabric is cut, center the paper piece and
finger press one of the long edges of the fabric over the paper.
Using the glue pen, start gluing from the fabric
seam allowance edge, across the paper template, and continue across the other
fabric seam allowance edge.
***Note! Use a thin bead of
glue!!! Eventually you will be removing
the papers from your shapes and too much glue will make this more
difficult. Use the minimum amount of
glue to just hold the fabric edges down.
Glue the opposite long edge next. Always glue opposite edges for the first two
sides – it will help keep the paper from shifting.
After gluing the long sides, it’s an easy matter
to glue down the short sides using the same technique. Make sure the fabric folds snugly around the
paper piece.
When you’re finished, you will have a neat looking
shape with all edges glued around the paper shape.
Sound
easy? It is! You will be able to make many shapes quickly
and easily using this method.
Hand Piecing Method using Inklingo:
With the hand-piecing method, you need to trace
cutting lines and stitching lines.
You can make templates of the honeycomb and square shapes from the
“Patchwork of the Crosses” book, trace the shape on your fabric, and cut ¼”
from the line. Or, you can use Inklingo. Inklingo is a downloadable shape collection
that allows you to print shapes on freezer paper backed fabric using an inkjet
printer. It precisely prints both the
cutting lines and the stitching lines.
If you'd like
to try some free Inklingo shapes watch the blog for details of how you log in to the website using our access code. Inklingo can also be used to
print the honeycomb and square shapes on paper if you'd like to make your own
template papers instead of buying them.
