Alright alright alright, quilt piecing techniques.
Here is where I put in my disclaimer that this information is a somewhat broad overview of different quilting techniques. It is likely missing information as I am going to give you what I’ve discovered for myself over the past few years. I plan to delve more into many of these techniques as I go, so I will adjust as I learn.
Traditional Quilt Piecing
Whether you do so by hand or by machine, the most common technique is straight piecing. I will focus on the machine version as I typically don’t hand piece outside of English Paper Piecing (see below).
There are some pretty standard elements included in quilt blocks, such as squares, rectangles, triangles, half square triangles, and so on. Pretty much any geometric shape can be use in blocks. There are of course a ton of different ways to piece traditionally, using templates, rulers, Accuquilt and various other techniques (such as piecing half square triangles), but all of these are ultimately done by machine or hand using a consistent quarter inch seam allowance.
No, I didn’t say scant – ultimately as long as you’re consistent you should be fine, though your end measurements may or may not match the pattern.
Paper Piecing
I love paper piecing.
It is my belief you love it or you hate it – and I find that you can create amazingly accurate and complicated designs using this method. Paper piecing allows you to use essentially a pattern to create a block, often with very complicated designs. The beauty of it is you can get very sharp and consistent points on things like stars, you can piece animals, flowers and so on.
What makes it challenging for many people is you’re basically sewing upside down and backwards, since you’re following a printed pattern.
Some suggestions for success – if you’re not using paper piecing paper (it’s a different weight that typical copy paper), increase your stitches per inch to better perforate the paper and check your tension and often.
Ask me how I know.
English Paper Piecing
The awesomeness that is English Paper Piecing (or EPP) – what’s not to love about a totally portable quilting project?
This technique uses templates of shapes – hexagons are super common but there are others – whether they are made from paper or a thin plastic and they’re hand pieced.
I love this technique as you can really just get lost in it. It makes for fabulous scrap quilts – in particular Grandmother’s Flower Garden, which is made up of hexagons in the shape of flowers. It is a great opportunity to piece flowers and just sort of collect them as you go for a quilt later. I have started a scrap version, though I finished a flower garden last year out of a specific line of fabric. It is definitely easy to drop it and pick it back up later – and as I said there are a lot of different shapes. You can put together all sorts of stuff relatively easily.
Applique
Admittedly, I haven’t dabbled a ton yet in applique but it is fast becoming one of my favorite ways to think about accenting a quilt.
Generally you will use some sort of template to cut a shape from fabric which has been adhered to some manner of fusible web. The edges can be stitched over with a variety of stitching, or even left raw. I think it all depends on the intended use of the quilt and whether or not it will see a lot of laundering. The most recent item I did using applique was a small wall hanging and instead of stitching over the edges, I chose to free motion quilt over the designs.
You can use applique as the focal point of your blocks (think Sunbonnet Sue) or you can use it to accent an otherwise boring quilt – perhaps that jelly roll race you did that is just rather blah. Maybe drop a flower or animal of some nature on the quilt and make it a bit more interesting?
Or… how about a way to disguise an oops?
As in, “my points are great everywhere but this one block…” Maybe a cute applique design to cover it up?
Anyway- you get the idea.
Art Quilts
Okay- here is where there are a lot of techniques that can be plugged into this category and I’ve not yet delved into most of them.
Have you seen those portrait quilts?
What about confetti quilts?
Landscape quilts?
These are just a few examples of things that I have on my Quilt It List – but haven’t yet tackled. Stay tuned for those adventures as I will be sharing them for sure!
