(soft music) - Hi, I'm Tula Pink. Today, we are talking about English paper piecing, the sewing. So this is where the real magic happens, you've done all your prep
work, you're ready to go. I'm gonna teach you everything I know, about sewing, by hand,
for English paper piecing. So when we're getting ready to sow, to actually put needle to fabric, there's a couple of things that are going to make
this turn out better. So one of the things I
figured out early on, was that... this whole
concept of perfection, so striving for perfection, is admirable, achieving it, is super boring, and also never gonna to happen. So instead of putting all of my... because this is, by
hand, and not by machine, I know that I'm never gonna
truly achieve perfection. So, I gave up on that a long time ago. Instead of trying to
get the perfect stitch, that is completely invisible, which I know will never happen, I instead put all my effort
into hiding my mistakes. So, one of the ways that I do
that, is through thread color. So I use... when I travel, and I am sewing, cause
most of my hand sewing is done on the move. If I'm at home, I'm gonna sit down in my studio, at my sewing
machine and sew on the machine. But when I am out of the studio, watching TV at night, on an airplane, I still want something to do. And, the best thing, that
I can think of to do, is to sew. It makes me the happiest. So I want something I can take with me. And that is the beauty
of English paper piecing, is you can start and stop, anywhere. So English paper piecing doesn't require a whole bunch of setup. I can pull out a little bag of pieces to sew on a plane, and put it away when we hit turbulence or whatever. So I can start and stop really easily. And that's a big advantage
to English paper piecing. One of the ways I'm going to ensure that my thread doesn't show on the front of my quilt, is actually to camouflage it, rather than count on a perfect stitch. And the way that I do that
is by matching my thread to the fabric. So when I travel, I travel with many, many thread colors. So I will have every
possible thread color, I could think of, for the
pieces that I'm working on. In this case, I'm gonna
be, right now showing you English paper piece sewing, on this piece. So what I'm looking at
here is a centerpiece, that has some gold,
greenish gold, some greens, some blues, some teals, some aquas, and then this piece, which
has a high contrast polka dot, that is a Kaffe polka dot. And it's got this dark teal, but
also this light sort of, celery green color in it. And I want to find the color of thread that's going to best match,
the edges of this piece. So what I'm looking for is the color, that most consistently occurs, around the edge of this piece. So I could go with this aqua color, there's this darker teal color, but I think the color I'm gonna come into contact with the most, is this sort of teal
background of my stars here. So I'm gonna choose a thread color, that most closely matches that color. That way, when my stitch goes too deep, because I'm too busy watching
a movie on the airplane, or I just have a wonky stitch
that shows up on front, you'll never be able to see it because it'll fall into
the fabric that I'm sewing. So that is probably the most
crucial element of choosing or sewing for English paper piecing. Don't try to be perfect, put all your effort into
hiding your mistakes. That way when you're not
perfect, which is inevitable, it won't matter, nearly as much. So what we're looking at here, is a whole bunch of different colors and trying to match to color. So, often, it's not gonna be one color that's hitting on all the edges. So I'm trying to, one, find
the most consistent color. But when in doubt, I'm gonna go, say I have two pieces
that I'm sewing together. So, Say I am sewing this
piece to this piece. So if I'm sewing these
two pieces together, there is not necessarily,
a balanced color between these two pieces. So when in doubt, I'm always gonna choose the color that goes with the lighter fabric. So when in doubt, go light.
That's my general rule. It's accurate about 95% of the time. So, in an extreme case, say
you're sowing a white piece to a black piece, I'm always gonna use a white white thread
and not a black thread. I think the dark thread shows up on light fabric far more
than light thread shows up on dark fabric. So when in doubt, go light. In the case of the piece
I'm working on today, I have a pretty... my two pieces really, if you look at the edges
of these two pieces, are really quite close. They're both in the blue family. So I know I'm in the sort of teal blue colors. And I'm gonna go with the
color that's most consistent, which I believe is this darker color. If I was unsure, I could go
with either a lighter aqua or a darker teal but I really find that across all these pieces
is probably my darker color that's gonna match the best. But when in doubt, go light. So, the first thing I'm
gonna do is thread my needle, like we talked about
earlier in the tool section, I'm going to thread my
needle off the spool, and not, I'm not gonna cut it first, I'm gonna thread my needle and then cut the thread off the spool. And so the first thing I'm gonna do because this is a new piece, a new spool of thread, is I'm gonna give
myself a little angled cut. And I'm cutting it at a slight angle to give me a little point
on the thread itself. Now the thing I'm not going to do, no matter how badly I want to, is lick the thread, just don't do it. Because what happens is the moisture, when you lick the
thread, causes the thread to actually expand. And
what's gonna happen is, it may help you thread
your needle in the moment, I will not deny that
it sometimes does work. But what happens is, as it dries, as your lick dries on the thread, that thread is gonna expand, and become a little palm at the
end of your piece of thread. And it's gonna knot, around
the rest of your thread. That's what's gonna
catch as you're sewing. So I don't really want to lick the thread. Well, I shouldn't lick the thread, I'm dying to lick the thread, but I'm not gonna do it. So one of the ways that makes it easier to thread a needle, is to bring the needle to the thread, rather than
the thread to the needle. Now that I've mentioned it,
I did it really easily when I wasn't paying attention, and then pull my thread through, pull it off the top of
my spool, and cut it. So now I have my thread. One thing that you're gonna
notice, when I start to sew, is that I am never going to tie a knot in this thread, loosely. I am going to start
with it just like this. I have tried every single knot, that I can find a YouTube video for, and I can't do any of them. There's so many knot tricks in the world, and for whatever reason my brain
cannot process any of them. So I never tie a knot in my thread, ever. What I'm gonna do, is I'm gonna start by putting
my two pieces together. So I'm gonna sow this triangle
on to this little pentagon, I'm gonna use my SewTite
because it's amazing. And so what I'm looking for here is just the little ends on
either end of this piece. So I'm just trying to line
those up and center it. Put my little magnet on. Now I have my piece, they're being really nicely held together by my Sewtite here, right here. That's where it says SewTite. So the first thing I'm gonna do, because I have these little ears here, which are sort of annoying, is I'm gonna pull it out of the way. So I can actually pull it out of the way, and put it under my magnet just to keep it out of the way. So see how my magnet sort of holding that little ear out of the way so it'll not interfere with my sewing. And so now I'm looking at my two points, my two corner pieces right
here where they line up. And I'm gonna take my thread
with no knot in it, right. And I'm gonna go through one corner, and the other corner,
and pull it through so that there's just this little tail, it's about, I would say
maybe like a half inch, little half inch tail, and there's no knot in my thread. And I'm gonna bring my needle through that little corner
again, until I have a loop. So now I have this
little loop sticking up. I'm gonna bring my needle
up through it once, bring it up through it twice, and that's gonna double
knot the first stitch of my piece, and now that
piece isn't going anywhere. So they're totally tied
together, nice and tight. And I didn't ever have to do some sort of origami with my
fingers to tie some kind of weird knot. So now I'm
gonna go through, so one of the things you may notice
if you're watching this, it's most people are taught
to sow towards themselves. So most people are taught to sow with their needle out here
and come through this way and pull it out this way. I actually naturally, sow
the opposite direction. And after being made painfully aware by most of my sewing teachers
that I sewed backwards, I started investigating why I did that, and trying to figure out if it was just something I was doing naturally, or if there was actually
some advantage to it. And I've determined that
there actually is an advantage to sewing away from myself,
rather than towards myself. And the advantage is
this, I never ever suffer, I sew, hand sew, maybe, sometimes two to four hours an evening, I really like it. And I
never suffer any kind of pain in my thumb, in my wrist,
my elbow or my shoulder, I never have any kind of
complication or physical trauma from sowing that long, every night. And I think there's a
couple reasons for that. So when you just drop your hands, your hands drop on a table,
sort of like this, right? When I hold my needle and thread, I'm actually holding them
in much the resting position that they would naturally fall into, when I'm sewing, when I do this, look what I'm doing to my wrist, I don't know if you can see, sort of what I'm doing to my wrist, but, I'm turning it away
for myself and actually torquing my wrist, I can
already feel something in my wrist, it doesn't hurt or anything. But I can feel a pulling in my wrist, that over a long period of time and many, many stitches is going to add up to some kind of wrist trauma. So by sitting this way, I'm actually sitting the way my hands naturally rest, which is putting zero
trauma on my wrist, elbow, shoulder or thumb pad. The other thing that I
have found that maybe is an advantage to sewing,
what we'll call backwards, is if I'm pulling the needle
thread through this way, into my fabric that's held in this hand, I'm actually trying to move
two independent objects towards each other in a very precise way. I'm trying to catch
just the top two threads of each piece of fabric as I stitch. And if these are two independent things, I have to guide two
things towards themselves. When I sow this way, it's actually a more relaxed position. And I'm taking my
knuckles and resting them on the hand that's holding my pieces. So now I'm guiding one object
towards another object, but in one motion, so it's all one piece. So if this hand moves, this hand moves, they move together. And so it's a lot easier to get a precise needle through the fabric when I'm working with one object rather than two separate entities. The other third reason is, and this I think should
be the most obvious, is if I'm coming through this way, I can't see the back of my piece. So I'm coming through this way, and having to turn it towards myself, I'm now torquing this
wrist in order to see it. But by going through this way, I can see both pieces at the same time. So when I say I sow backwards, I now have reasons why. Because I really thought
about it and really tried to do it this way to see if there was any, And what I suffered from was a lot of, a lot more trauma to my wrist
and elbow by going this way. So I go this way, and my hands are rested
on top of each other. And a couple of things that
make a good stitch, are, A: how many stitches you stitch per inch. So I would say, I stitch
too many stitches per inch. So if I was a student in my own class, I would tell myself to relax. But I'm like 15 years deep on this now and some habits can't be undone. So if you're new to this, what you want to aim for is about 16 to 18 stitches per
inch is really solid, you can go up to 20. But any more than that, and you're actually creating more damage along the edge of this fabric, that's essentially going
to do more harm than good. Because the more holes you put through the end of this fabric, the more you're damaging
the end of the fabric. This little, which is
essentially your seam, not essentially it is your seam. And the more damage you do to that seam, the weaker your actual stitch is gonna be. So we want a good amount of stitches, but not so many. So don't
kill yourself trying to do the smallest stitch in the world. It's actually counterproductive. So, I'm gonna move over, so I made one stitch,
and see this little tail that's sticking up right here, that is from our first
stitch, when we did that knot, I'm actually, the thread's
coming back out here, and I'm actually pulling it
around, the little thread, the little tail that's sticking up. And I'm going to sew that
tail, into my stitch. And so you can see with every stitch, it's laying down more and more. And it's just gonna rest inside my stitch. So I'm coming up over the little tail, and back with the needle underneath it, until it makes almost like
a little tunnel, around it. Nope, got caught. And it's... I'm gonna start sowing that into my seam. So I'm just trying to
grab just the smallest, two little threads, just a
couple threads from each piece. So there are two reasons that your thread will show up on the front of your quilt. One, you're going too deep. So there's a natural inclination to want to go deeper on your stitch, because you think it's gonna hold better. But all it's really doing
is putting more thread on the front of your
fabric than on the back. So this is a really,
really shallow stitch. It's so shallow and so gentle. The other reason your
thread is gonna show up, on the front of your quilt
is if you go in at an angle. So if you look at the needle going in at an angle,
it's gonna put more fabric on the front of your quilt
than on the back of it. So, it's really tempting
to put your needle in at an angle like this, because you think, "Oh,
I'm moving so fast, I'm making so much progress, I'm getting across this piece so quickly," because you're going in diagonally and covering more distance. The problem is that when you do that, and go in at an angle, that's putting the longest
part of your stitch on the front, and the
shortest part of your stitch on the back. So you want
your needle to go in perpendicular to your piece. So, see how it's totally straight in, because that's putting the
straight part of my stitch on the front, and then I'm moving over, to make the next stitch and that's leaving the
diagonal part of the stitch, which is the longest part of the stitch on the back of my quilt. Okay, so now I'm at the end of this piece. So I'm going to keep
going to the next piece, but I want to secure this piece in place before I do that. So I made my last stitch all the way up at this corner, I'm gonna come just
like the way we started every time I come to two new points, no matter where I'm at... Oh, and then I pulled the stitch. Every time I come to
two new points, right. So these are two points
I haven't been at before, I'm going to go through, make my loop, right,
just like when I started, I'm gonna pull my thread through once, pull it through twice. And now I've got a knot on that piece. And I can take this off and open it, and I have a beautifully
little stitch piece if I do say so myself. So, now I need to go to the next piece. So when I go to the next piece, I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna pull the little
ear out of the way, I'm gonna... and these are now two new points that I haven't touched yet. So I will tie the same knot,
just like I did before. Go through each corner, pull the loop, every
time I come to a corner, I'm gonna do this little
double knot trick. And the reason for that, is
because if something happens in the middle, say my thread breaks, I pull too hard, whatever happens, I know that I'm secure
all the way to this point, I know that I don't need to worry about my thread all the
way to the beginning. So every time I come to a point, I'm going to tie a knot. So what's going to happen is, essentially, wherever your points come
together, in your piece, is the weakest part of your quilt. This is stronger, than this
because it's two pieces that want to pull away from each other. So by tying a knot here and a knot here, and then if I add a piece in here, I'll tie another knot from here to here, and another knot from here
to here, when I come to it. And now I have a circle of knots. So there'll be one, two, three, four knots all around this point. I have now turned the
weakest part of my quilt, into the strongest part of my quilt, because of all those little circle of knots I have holding
all those points together. Because this is all pressed, these are all basted away from each other, it's essentially the same as
having an open seamed quilt. So if you're doing a machine quilt, and all the seams are pressed open, you know that that's weaker, than if you press them to one side, but it lays flatter. So
there's an advantage. So the same rules apply here. It's almost like an open seam quilt. So whenever I come to two new pieces, I want to really ensure that those pieces are
locked in place tight. Say that I'm done with this piece now. I've just finished sewing this and I'm all done with
it, I've sewn my knot. And it's all finished. And I need to either
change my thread color, because I'm starting a new
piece, or I'm just out of thread. Now, please, public service announcement, we are not in a thread drought. So please don't sew until you only have this like an inch or two of
thread left. If at any point, you're trying to bend
your needle back as far as you can to see if you can
get it through your fabric one more time. Do not make
yourself suffer that way, it's not worth it. Just
start a new thread, I have been using this package of thread. For every single English paper piece quilt that I've made in the last 10 years, and I've only replaced four spools. We are not gonna run out
of thread, I promise. So please start a new piece. That's my public service announcement. So back to our finishing. So say we've finished this, we're just gonna pretend ,right, that I finished this piece. And now for whatever reason
I want to start a new thread. I've tied my little knot. So it's nice and secure right here. And I'm just gonna take my needle, run it a little ways under my fabric, whatever seam is closest to it. And I take my little curved snips, and I'm gonna cut it right at the fabric. So if you look at a piece like this that's currently in progress,
that I've been working on, there's no thread tails
anywhere on the back of this, nothing that's going to
pop through to the front, or get caught up or tied
around something else. They're all buried in the seams. And that's a super important
part of your sewing, because it will get
caught up in things later. So you want to bury your thread as you go. So, one of the things that
is mildly controversial in the English paper piecing world, Yes, there is an English paper piecing world, is when to pull your pieces. Pulling your pieces, should
happen as you go, in my opinion. If you can see on this piece that I'm working on here, how only the pieces that
haven't been sown to something else still have paper, all of this, is paper free, right here. Every time I sow a piece
in, on all of its sides, I pop the paper out. Because if this was all full of paper, when I'm trying to sow
a piece onto the edge, I have all this paper to contend with and it gets big and it gets unruly. Because, I've pulled the
paper out of the center. If I want to sew something to this edge, I can just ward it up,
because it's all sewn together and there's nothing stiff in it. So I want to pull paper, you can see where I've left paper. So this side is unsewn, the paper still in, this side is unsewn. This side is unsewn. So only the pieces that haven't been sewn
in all the way around, still have paper in them. And a lot of people
ask, who are either new to glue basting or new
to English paper piecing in general is, how do
you pull out the papers. And it's really easy when
you're working with glue, you just lift up one side, any side, stick your finger under
it and pull it out. It's really that simple. Some people like to punch a little hole in the middle of their piece so that they can get a
little finger lift on it. Again, that's time I don't
want to take but it does work. And these papers can be reused
up to three or four times. So anytime you buy one of the
English paper piecing kits that I've designed, you'll have enough papers
to do the whole quilt, and only use them once. But if you think you might want to make this quilt again or a
portion of this quilt, or rework something, you can save all of these pieces and reuse them up to three or four times. So they really do hold up pretty well. So that is basically all
there is that you need to know about English paper piecing. It's a really simple process,
that just takes time. But, if you want to make a masterpiece, this is my favorite way to do it. Thank you so much for
watching my tutorials on English paper piecing
here at fatquartershop.com I am super, super excited, to be able to share this with you, it's my favorite way to piece, and I have more videos coming up so don't forget to check those out. (soft music)
