Tearing my hair out
Yesterday was my day for getting my September block for the EEEEP EPP BEE designed and a prototype made.
I’m a bit of a newbie to English Paper Piecing – except for the hexagon quilt I made as a teenager, I’ve done precisely nothing except for the Treasure Chest blocks that I made for the bee last month. But how hard can it be? I printed out graph paper, sharpened my pencil, found my ruler, which was lurking in the bottom of my sewing box and set to.
Designing something went pretty well and after a little bit of faffing around with colour pencils and getting the colour placement sorted I got down to the nitty gritty of looking for scraps. My scrap basket is rather like Mary Poppins’ handbag – and even I was shocked at how much there was in there (I definitely feel another scrappy rug project coming on!).
Very soon I had this….
and then this…
and then the trouble began. You see it didn’t cross my mind when I was playing with my graph paper that I maybe needed to worry about points. Now I think maybe I shouldn’t have been so gung ho. There are an awful lot of fiddly points and angles meeting in this and I had no idea that it was so difficult to get really nice crisp centres with EPP.
It was very frustrating…very, very frustrating….
So I gave up for a bit and went and defrosted the freezer. If you have any idea how much I utterly detest doing this, then you might have a glimpse of what sort of a state I was in.
Then I did a bit more, and it didn’t really go much better…
So I cleaned the AGA – another detested job….
And then finally got my prototype finished…
From a distance it’s now passable, but I can say hand on heart that the points would have been way, way better if I’d made this on the machine. I think I must be doing something wrong on the points, so today I’m going to have another go on the second block.
However – I like my pattern and I think it will be really nice when I can put several blocks together – the sides will either produce cream or coloured squares which I can play around with to make secondary patterns. I do just wonder of everyone in the whole bee will hate me for ever more for all the acute angles they’ll have to deal with.
There’s way more to this EPP malarky than meets the eye I can tell you!!
Helen
August 3rd, 2012 at 10:30 am
I love this colourful block! Its happy look belies its traumatic creative process! You must have been fairly traumatised to resort to defrosting the freezer.
August 3rd, 2012 at 11:38 am
I’d better take up quilting if it has such a positive knock-on effect regarding housework!
The block looks beautiful.
August 3rd, 2012 at 1:28 pm
I love the block & the colours are gorgeous! If this is for the Europe bee an, I had better start now!! & I had better get into the stash or go shopping.
I usually clean the bathroom when I am like that but with the cleaner coming in this morning I had to defrost the freezer instead. Very cathartic & stops me getting snappy (well there was all that grumbling about cheap landlords & crappy appliances but that doesn’t count).
I am having a sucky grown up decision making day today
Sewing this afternoon will cheer me up I am sure.
August 3rd, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Looks more than passable to me!!!
August 3rd, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Oh Helen, I feel for you. There is definitely more to this EPP thing and I’m learning that too as I baste Danielle’s block. It’s a lovely block and of course we won’t hate you…well nothing that a jumbo block of Toblerone can’t put right
August 3rd, 2012 at 3:09 pm
I think it looks great and I wouldn’t worry too much about the points. Once it’s quilted and washed no one will look at the points and tut.
I’ve never resorted to defrosting the freezer, maybe I should try it next time I’m frustrated
August 3rd, 2012 at 5:22 pm
I hope you have some hair left, because the block is lovely
August 3rd, 2012 at 6:06 pm
It’s amazing how much housework I can get done when ideas are not flowing in the studio..so I begin to procrastinate by cleaning. Thankfully it never lasts long.
August 3rd, 2012 at 11:29 pm
It came out great! I think you have a natural talent for EPP.
August 4th, 2012 at 9:07 pm
Oh man, cleaning? It must have been bad! Well done for battling it through though