Mastering English Paper Piecing: A Beginner’s Guide to Getting Started

(excerpt from feature article - BLOCK Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 2). 

Sewing machines are invaluable tools that most quilters couldn’t bear to be without. Their needles race to create stitches almost faster than the eye can see, joining pieces at a pace that would have boggled the minds of our quilting ancestors.

But sometimes, you may want to step away from the speed of the sewing machine. Leave behind the mechanical rat-a-tat-tat of your machine needle bobbing up and down, and do some peaceful hand sewing instead. Relax in the comfort of an easy chair, put your feet up, and savor the contented feeling of drawing a threaded needle through fabric.

If you love quilting but you’re not feeling the need for speed, English paper piecing could be for you! In a nutshell, EPP consists of folding over and securing the edges of fabric shapes to sturdy paper shapes, hand sewing the fabric shapes together, and then removing the paper.

The geometric pieces are put together to form any number of charming designs that can be appliquéd onto background fabric, made into small projects such as coasters and ornaments, or even joined to create full-size quilts!

Because EPP is done by hand, it’s a great project to take with you when you’re on the go. Does the thought of EPP pique your interest? Then let’s get started!

Get In Shape: EPP Papers & Templates

To begin your project, you need EPP papers. These could be included with an EPP pattern or purchased as a package of precut shapes. The hexagon, or hexi, is a popular shape, but EPP designs use triangles, diamonds, octagons, trapezoids, parallelograms, and more!

You also could cut your own shapes. Cardstock is a good choice. It’s a midweight paper that is thicker than writing paper but thinner than cardboard. Some people choose to put a paper-punched hole in the center of each shape. Although not completely necessary, the hole makes it easy to pop the paper out of the fabric shapes after they are sewn together.

If you’re cutting paper shapes by hand, it’s important to be precise. When you assemble your project, all your shapes will need to fit together like puzzle pieces. If you hadn’t cut carefully, your end result will be wonky. You don’t have to be so precise with your fabric, though! The fabric edges are folded around your shapes and left unfinished. You will be sewing together the folded edges, not the raw edges. So, cutting the fabric ¼”-⅜” larger than the shape all around is good enough!

If you want to be more precise with your fabric cuts, an acrylic EPP template works wonders. The template matches the paper shape but has an additional ¼” on all sides. Acrylic templates are great for fussy cutting as they allow you to see the image on your fabric as you want it to appear in your shape. Lay the template on your fabric and cut around it with a rotary cutter. A rotating cutting mat and a small, 28mm rotary cutter are handy tools for doing this. You also could trace around the template with a marking tool and use scissors to cut the fabric.

With cutting machines such as Cricut® or AccuQuilt® systems, you can cut your own cardstock shapes as well as the fabric shapes. Just remember that the fabric shapes have to be larger than the paper shapes on all sides.

Time to Baste

After you have your papers and their coordinating fabric shapes, the next step is to baste the fabric to the papers. The two most popular methods are glue basting and thread basting. Your goal is to attach the fabric to the paper in a way that makes it secure enough to neatly sew the fabric shapes together but not so secure that the paper is hard to remove.

You could buy glue specifically designed for EPP, but basic glue sticks work well, too. Lay your fabric shape wrong side up and center the paper shape on top of it. Run a line of glue around the perimeter of the paper shape, and then fold over the edges of the fabric onto the glue. Finger-press the edges as you fold over the fabric to create crisp lines and points. If you are creating a rounded shape, gently gather the fabric edges as you press them down.

To thread baste, place the fabric and paper together as with glue basting. Fold over two edges of the fabric and hold or clip it in place where they meet at a corner. Leaving a long thread tail, and backstitch once at the corner. Sew through the fabric only, not the paper. Carry the thread to the next corner, make a stitch, and continue around to each corner to attach the fabric around the paper. For long edges or large shapes, you can take a running stitch at the midpoint between corners.

Some people prefer to baste through both the fabric and the papers. This is a personal preference, but if you go through the paper, the basting stitches must be removed before the paper can be removed. If you don’t go through the paper, it’s not imperative that you remove the basting stitches later.

Connect the Shapes

Now that your papers are covered with fabric, it’s time to hand sew them together. You’ll want to hide your stitches as much as possible, and a fine polyester thread will help you do that. Choose 50wt or finer. You’ll also want to use a fine needle. A size 11 or 15 milliners needle works well. It is slender but has a big eye that makes it easy to thread.

Place two shapes together with the right sides of the fabric facing each other. Where the two shapes will be joined, whipstitch the edges together with fine, closely spaced stitches. Work back to front, catching just a few threads of each fabric piece. Make your stitches about 1/16” apart. When you unfold the two shapes, your stitches should be nearly invisible.

Pull the Paper

After the shapes are sewn together, you can remove the basting stitches if needed or desired and pop out the papers. For a small project, don’t remove the papers until you are finished sewing together all the shapes. For a large quilt, you could remove some of the first finished paper shapes as the quilt grows in size. If removed carefully, the papers can be reused for making new shapes. If you glue basted and the glue is still sticky, pressing with a warm iron should be enough to loosen the glue.

Give It a Whirl

If you want to experiment with EPP and make a dent in your scraps, try making hexi flowers. For each flower, you’ll need seven hexis of equal size–one hexagon as the flower’s center and six hexagon petals surrounding it. Like flowers in nature, hexi flowers can be just about any color you pull from your scrap bin. And because you have artistic license, they can be made of any print, too.

But if you’re making multiple flowers, remember how they will look when they are all put together. For example, one hexi flower made with a solid center and an assortment of multicolored petals creates a fun, potpourri of colors and prints. But when the petals of all those flowers fit together, the individual flower shape will be lost, leaving you with a mass of colorful, hexagon prints and random “polka dots” of solid colors. You can avoid that outcome by surrounding each flower with a solid neutral color to allow the individual flower shapes to stand out.

Appliqué your hexi flowers onto background fabric to make a wall hanging or tote bag. Embellish a shirt or jacket with a hexi flower on a pocket. Sew hexi flowers onto triangles and string a banner. Create a hexi coaster. Let your imagination and creativity run wild!

Now that you know how to do English paper piecing, the possibilities for creating EPP projects are endless. Check out the Strawberry Fields EPP skillbuilder project, exclusively found in BLOCK Volume 12, Issue 2, as well as Missouri Star’s handy EPP tools. With these in your sewing arsenal, you’ll be hand stitching in no time!

Love what you just read? Keep the inspiration coming by subscribing to BLOCK Magazine! Every issue includes 10 exclusive patterns, skill-building tips, technique guidance, trend insights, and plenty of ideas to spark your next quilting project. It’s more than a magazine – it’s an idea book offering a creativity boost. Whether you are new to sewing or an experienced quilter, there’s inspiration to be found in every issue. Subscribe to BLOCK Magazine today so you never miss a stitch!

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