Old School BOM- Basting EPP with Starch!

I’m thrilled to be involved in this Old School BOM project!  It’s always so good to learn some basics for quilting, as well as something new!  Thanks to Kim for including me and giving me the opportunity to show you all something “old school” done in a new way.   We'll be making an old school Hexie block with a fussy cut center.

When I started quilting one of the first quilts I wanted to make was a quilt with hexagon blocks.  I have an old quilt my Memaw made in the 30’s and it is one of my favorite antiques for sure.  Generally, Hexagon quilts are made using traditional hand piecing or the English Paper Piecing method.  The English Paper Piecing method is what interested me.  (EPP).  This means the quilter has a hexagon shape made from thick paper.  It is positioned on the wrong side of the fabric and the seam allowances are folded over the paper and basted in place.  I tried to baste hexie after hexie but I just couldn’t hold that paper still enough to have a good shape in the end.  The paper would shift and move at each turn and before long, I had no seam allowance left to turn over the paper!  No matter which tricks I used, I could not do a good job! 

Years later I was preparing some applique’ shapes using freezer paper and starch and it dawned on me that perhaps this would work for basting EPP shapes.  It worked like a charm, but after a while, I realized I needed some tools (notions) that were not available.  My husband encouraged me to start designing what I needed and we now have a line of EPP and Applique' notions for Starch Basting.  I've got a few videos on my website that tell you all about the technique and notions, and shows you just how to use them.  Take a look HERE and after watching you'll be ready to begin the block.  Try to watch the second video listed (from your PC or Android device) as it is the most recent.  If you don't have a PC,  you can watch the first video loaded.  The rest are nice to watch too! 

The basics of this technique are:  

1-Make the hexie template from a double layer of freezer paper.  

2-Cut fabric 1/4" larger on all sides of the hexie.

3-Iron the template to the wrong side of the fabric.

4-Paint the seam allowance with starch.

5-Fold the seam allowance onto the template and iron until dry with a mini iron.

6-Let the hexie cool and remove the template.  Repeat, repeat, repeat!

7-Sew the hexies together...YAY!

When you finish getting educated on this method from the videos, download the PDF file HERE .  You'll need to complete the checkout process, but don't worry, I will not ask for your credit card info or spam you!  This is just the way my website requires you to get the download.  Upon checkout completion a Purchase Confirmation box will pop up and you can get the download DIRECTLY FROM THIS BOX.  That's the easiest way to find the link.  😊 An email will also be sent with the link to get the download.

You can make the hexie with a fussy cut center as shown above, or if you'd rather have a block full of hexies, you'll need to make a few more and fill the center as shown below.  I can't wait to see how you make your block with your fabrics when you post in the Old School BOM FB Group!  Have fun and please let me know if you have any questions by asking in the FB group or by sending me an email through the comment form on the website, TraditionalPrimitives.com.

These blocks shown here are from a few of my fabric collections with Blank Quilting Corp- The hexies in the first picture are from my current collection, Abby's Treasures- in stores now!  The center and background in the first picture are from my next line, Ashton Collection, shipping to stores in October.  Be sure to tell your local shop to get this one ordered in time!  It has some wonderful prints and border prints!  The center in the second picture is from previous lines, Rustic Homestead and Ginger & Spice.  See more on my website on the Fabrics and Woolen Page as I still have some prints from these past collections available. 

Join the  Old School BOM | Facebook FB group and join the fun to learn the basics of quilting! Here is a list of the participating designers sharing our lessons, tips and tricks.  

Jan 12, '21- Kim Lapacek Persimon Dreams- Block 1 Patched Friendship Star

Feb 12 '21- Nancy Scott- Masterpiece Quilting

Mar 12 '21- Quilt Jane

Apr 12 '21- Missie Carpenter, Traditional Primitives

May 12, '21- Natalie Santini, Sew Hungry Hippie

June 12, '21- Kerry Goulder, Kid Giddy

July 12, '21- GoGo Kim

Aug 12, '21- Lee Chappell Monroe, May Chappell

Sept 12, '21- Yvonne Fuchs, Quilting Jetgirl

Oct 12, '21- Pat Sloan

Nov 12, '21- Katy Cameron, The Littlest Thistle

Dec 12, '21- Sherri Falls, This and That Patterns

Thanks for stopping by,

Take Care,

Missie

TraditionalPrimitives.com

Many Adventures!

Since I last posted so much has happened...so much that I can't remember it all! Spring Quilt Market was in Salt Lake City, a beautiful town indeed. I was so impressed with the kind people, beautiful scenery and clean downtown. We stayed in an apartment near the convention center and had a lovely view of the mountains.

Spring Market was successful and it was so fun to see new friends I've made in the past few years. I was next door to Robin of Briar Root Primitives and Norma of Timeless Treasures. Across the aisle was Cindy from Quilt Doodle and Barbara from Vanilla House. Such nice gals...each one of them! We all learn from each other and I'm so impressed with how differently they each run their businesses. So cool that this industry is filled with such wonderfully creative women.

My youngest daughter Katie and my Dear Hubs came along and we had a great time. I am so thankful for my wonderful family!

I did introduce some new designs that I have not shown you yet. First up is Castle Windows, inspired by...guess...a Castle Window that I saw online a while back. It is a very simple and quick Applique quilt that looks much more detailed than it actually is! I whipped it up in just a few days and most of the stitching was done in the car on our various travels this spring.

Next is Vintage Buddies- Two Old Crows and A Pair Of Hares. This one was super quick to make and has the unique binding I'm enjoying when I do an English Paper Pieced quilt. It intrigues people so much to see the Hexies on the fron and back of the quilt. An interesting "binding" for sure. To add interest there is a bit of stitchery on these designs. I used wool thread which looks soft and a bit fluffy and adds to the vintage feel of these table runners.

Royal Babies is also quick and simple to make. These baby quilts have pieced blocks that are inspired by one of the Blocks in Gardens Of A King. The full block is made once and then other sections of it were added in as the other blocks. They are all applique'd onto the pieced background and make a cute quilt for a boy or girl. Very simple and a breeze to stitch up!

The name of these quilts have a little story. I mentioned the block inspiration is from The Gardens Of A King, which you all know was inspired by the King George III Coverlet. King George III was married to Charlotte. The current Prince William now has two children, George and Charlotte. SO... I decided to make a boy version and a girl version in honor of the connection between the past and present Royals, George and Charlotte. Someday I do hope to have some grandchildren who can love on these quilts!

Of course, you can find these patterns and more on my website, Traditional Primitives, if you are interested!

While driving to Utah we saw a Tiny House! Very cute, but I need my space!

Since we got back from Market, we've done 2 shows. One in Tulsa and one in Minnesota. Both were great shows and it's always so nice to meet folks that I know from blogging or FB! Of course it's always fun to share my Starch Basting technique for English Paper Piecing with the show attendee's and watch them get so excited to learn an easy shortcut for basting. So many times I hear the statement "Why didn't I know that before I made a queen sized Hexie quilt!?" I am glad it gets them excited to get busy on more Hexies! In case you wonder what it looks like in my booth during a busy show, here's a snapshot!

This young mother wanted to find some sort of sewing to do with her four year old. She asked if they could try Rug Punching and they worked together to see if they would like it. The answer was yes! The little girl was so calm and patient and couldn't wait to get started at home! So wonderful to want to pass down the "sewing bug" to her young daughter! We need more young folks to keep these arts alive.

Jeff took a panoramic shot of the booth. It was funny because it took about 5 tries for us to get a half decent picture! A little blurry but you get the idea!

Next up is the Omaha Quilt Show this weekend. I'd love to meet some of you if you'll be there! Click on the link to see the info it begins at 5 pm June 23 and ends on The 25th at 4pm. This one goes until 8pm on the 24th! Wow, that will be a big shopping day! Hope to see you there!

That's a little summary of what's been happening recently. I've got another few quilts in the works and will post about them soon. Thanks so much for stopping by and as always, Take Care!

Missie

 

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First Time To Houston!

Hello Ladies! This post finds me finally feeling recovered from a busy 12 days from home to be in Houston for Quilt Market and Festival! It was a great time! I'll share the adventure with some photos...

First up- the Iowa Hillbillies head for Houston!

Time for a little stitching along the way! I wasn't sure if Quiltmania would have my sample back to me so I wanted to be sure to have it for showing in the booth. Even in the car, stitching was relaxing.

Will it all fit in the booth ??!!

Somehow it always does fit, Thank Goodness!!

 

Except for the extra for Festival!

 

So fun to share my Starch Basting technique!

Last May I introduced the Starch Brush at Market and this fall, Missie's Fingertip Stiletto made its debut!

Time has been so short recently I have not had much time to spare, so I have not even told all of you about this new notion. Production was absolutely filled with lessons learned and I appreciate every cool tool in our quilting stores! What an adventure! This notion, Missie's Favorite Fingertip Stiletto, is used to hold the hot freezer paper after the iron has been on it. It is bent the proper way for how I am using it as a fingertip extension and has coils that fit around all sizes of fingers, knuckles and fingertips! It's available HERE on my website if you are interested!

 

So fun to see old friends and new... Jamie Wallen was across the aisle- he purchased my new pattern, French Diamonds, and I can't wait to see how his version looks! Lisa DeBee Schiller is a designer who inspired me to love appliqué back in about 2003. Her designs really opened my desire to quilt and appliqué! So great to see her! Jeff and Trisha were a HUGE help! I couldn't have done it without them! And a customer brought along one of her projects to show me how hers looked! She did a great job on the Punchneedle Mini Quilt, Primitive Pineapple Welcome don't you think?

My quilt Pennies In My Garden was in the Special Exhibit area. I really did not know this was so special until I saw all the museum quilts, Moda Designer Section, and many other beautiful quilts that were in this show. I am very grateful to have been a part of this! You can tell by the giddy look on my face that I was thrilled to meet Linda Collins and Mary Koval and see Lisa again for a few minutes during Quilt Market! On the day that photo was taken by the Quilt Festival sign, the weather in Houston was VERY humid, but no rain yet! We walked across the green space to get some lunch while setting up.

I'm all ready for the doors to open and love sharing my techniques and patterns to ladies from all over the world!

Here, I am attempting to teach some ladies from Brazil how to do Punchneedle. They didn't speak any English so I do hope they will be able to understand the video once they are ready to give it a try! (I've got to do something about looking over my reading glasses! What a terrible look! Haha!)

 

Jeff was such a big help I can't begin to thank him enough. He is so supportive of my passion for quilting and loves to hear comments of how excited people are about seeing my time saving technique for basting. He is so funny with excitement as he shares the stories with me. I had to leave the booth to take a break and I came back to home giving the Starch Basting technique a try! He's never done it before and he did a wonderful job! We even had some return customers come back the next day to buy the peoducts after seeing his own demo. I'm proud! The next photos showed us we were in the right spot for quilt shopping excitement. This woman was posted on guard of the batting while we were trying to get into the parking area! Too funny! The last day was a bit slow at Festival and I had the opportunity to snap a quick pic of these ladies who just couldn't walk another step and we're sharing their purchases and chatting for at least a few minutes! Too cute! And the last photo shows you a bit of the terrible rain during some of the days of the event. We luckily had good weather for unloading but as you all probably heard, there was lots of flooding in the area. The airports were closed, roads were flooded and tornado and flood warnings going off all night as well as during the show! We were thankful to be safe and felt for all of those who had to deal with water cleanup.

And one final bit of excitement...when I got home and had a chance to get into all the emails that needed attention a friend had sent a photo snapshot of a post she saw on Instagram about Festival... They even named me in the post! How exciting!

 

After all was said and done, it was a great week in Houston. I loved the experience that came with exhibiting at Quilt Market and loved meeting so many wonderful ladies who have a great passion for quilting at Quilt Festival. Now that life is a bit calmer (well it will be soon after I find a place for all my "stuff" that has landed in the living room) I am looking forward to making a new quilt using the 1/2" hexes I've made while doing my demo at quilt shows this year!

Thanks for visiting and I hope to be able to post more regularly once again!

Take care,

Missie

 

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Glimpses Of The Past

We've taken a little time to be with my folks in Florida this week! We usually go to Destin, FL, but planning our trip at the last minute lead us to Panama City Beach this time. It's about 30 miles east of Destin but it seems like a whole new world. Here in Panama City Beach, the little beach town makes me think of old time movies that I used to love watching. I can just see some of the movie stars of yesteryear hanging out in a place like this! The building next to ours looks like it was quite something when it would have been new in the 50’s! I can just see Dean or Doris singing a little sweet song in an old movi in a setting like this!

The town is full of old tourist buildings that are fun to see. Of course the new is mixed in as well, and we are loving Starbucks right across the street! The sunsets are beautiful!

I got a few looks from folks when I was stitching on the beach yesterday! But hey, a girl's gotta stick when she has time right?! Here's a glimpse of my next quilt. I'm not quite sure what it will be when it's finished, but it sure is fun to piece these 1/2" hexes that I've Starch Basted! I've been making these as my demo in my booth while vending and I'm finally stitching them up to make a new quilt.

Speaking of Vending, I'll be heading to Houston in a few weeks for Quilt Market and also Festival. If any of you are going, please look me up! I'm in row 2400 for both events.

My new quilt, French Diamonds is completed and I'll be very excited to hang it in my booth. It's a pretty simple quilt to make and a nice take on an old Pennie Rug style quilt. You can see that the "Pennies" are Diamonds instead!

The clusters of Diamonds seem to look 3 dimensional, which was a nice surprise as I started stitching each block! Fun Surprise! The pattern is available on my website if you are interested!
Thanks for stopping by and I'll try to post again soon! Be sure to follow me on Instagram & Facebook if you can. Posting in those medias are so much quicker and I'm able to post there more often. Of course i'll be posting here when I can!
Take care,
MIssie

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How To Cut Fabric For Hexies...FAST!

When I'm teaching and vending and showing my Method for Basting English Paper Piecing with Starch, often I get the question about how I cut the Fabric Hexies. I have told you in the past about the Hexie Punches which I sell on my website and I show how to cut the Paper Shapes when I do the demo in shows. When I build the kits for the Hexie Mug Rug Pattern, I use the Sizzix Die Cutter so you have nice neat fabric hexies to give my method a try. But when I'm making a few hexies here and there, many times I cut them by hand with scissors.

I have nice sharp Kai scissors that have a 4" blade and they are SUPER great for cutting about 8-10 layers of cotton at a time! They are $16... available on the notions page on my website HERE.  In the picture above, I'm cutting a strip of fabric 1/2" wider than my Hexie shape. I cut all 10 layers at a time and can cut up to 16 layers at one cutting.!

From that strip I cut off a square, again leaving 1/4" on each side of the Hexie shape. I hold the stack with my first two fingers and don't let it go so they don't get displaced. This way they stay stacked up nice and neat.

Then I cut off the corners at the top and bottom of the square you see here, leaving 1/4" seam allowance outside the paper. (I like a scant 1/4" seam) Continue cutting until all sides are trimmed.

Until you have a complete Hexie cut out of the stack of fabrics.

From the strip of fabrics that were about 8" inches long I got 30 hexies in less than a minute!
Lots of ladies tell me they can't imagine cutting all those hexies they see in my quilts out of fabric. I compare this to any other quilt! We have to cut the pieces in order to make a quilt, right?! This doesn't take long and for me it's much quicker than rotary cutting or preparing an Applique piece for sewing. You can cut them very relaxed and they don't have to be perfect because they are used for English Paper Piecing so the prefect shape is formed by the paper!
I hope you see how quick and fun this can be!

On another note, I've had a few ladies send pictures of their blocks for The Gardens Of A King! They are stunning! Paula told me this week that they are addicting to make!! I totally agree! Is anyone else starting on The Gardens Of A King? I'd love to see your photos posted in the Traditional Primitives FB Group. Seeing what others are doing with colors will inspire you to get going on the next block! Search for Traditional Primitives from Missie Carpenter or click HERE to like the page and then join the group!  Let's get the party started and see some more blocks!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Take care,
Missie

Visit my web store www.TraditionalPrimitives.com

Back In The Saddle!

Wow! It's been a while since I've had time to blog! Wish I had some new sewing to show you, but I have not had time to do any quilty sewing. Today is English Paper Piecing club at the local quilt store, Creekside Quilting, so I will be finding a few minutes to stitch this afternoon thank goodness. Sewing at home this week has been spent on smocking 3 little dresses for some relatives. It brings back so many great memories of when I used to make most all of my girls' clothing when they were young. The picture below is a little peek as the dresses are a bit of a surprise for the girls' mom. When she receives them I will try to get a photo of the girls in the dresses. It was fun to get the pleater out again and sew these sweet little dresses! Do any of you smock ?

Last weekend I was off on another vending trip to Bloomington, IL. What a fun bunch of ladies! Everyone was very excited to be at the show and very interested in learning a little something new.

My set up was a wee bit different this time. It was so nice to have enough room to lay things out instead of on top of each other! There was actually room to have all the items separated into 'departments' and actually see all the items!! The booth was 20' long which was a treat! What you see above is not the entire space allowed. Next weekend I will be in Stover, MO at "It's A Gatherin'" and I will have to squeeze back into an 8' x 8' space. Now how will I do that?! LOL. I'm sure I will figure it out! And the shopping will be just as exciting!!

We actually had enough space to display the Punchneedle quilts all on their own. So nice to let them show off for once!!

My helper and I got to sit next to each other and visit easily now and then, which was pretty nice also!! I did the demos on the left side of the brown table and she ran the register on the right.

While doing the English Paper Piecing Basting with Starch demo, I usually work on 3/4" hexies. But this time I decided to work on hexies that I will actually use for my next little quilt. So the size this time is 1/2". Usually folks think the 3/4" is small, but this time I really heard that comment often! You can see the 3/4" hexies below on the bottom left of the picture. The 1/2" hexies are the others.

I just want to throw out a reminder that any time we are stitching by hand, smaller pieces are easier because all we want to be concerned with is the next stitch ahead of our needle, right?! If we have a large piece of paper with fabric basted around it in our hands a larger piece won't fit easily, right? So smaller is simpler in this case Vs a 2" or larger piece. Just focus on the next stitch ahead of your needle and take a deep breath! Don't forget to enjoy the process!

See that cutter up in the picture? That is a Fiskars Cutter. I have cut my little hexies out of a single layer of the C. jenkins Freezer paper. (If you cut a double layer of this strong freezer paper it will break the punch) Then I line up two hexies with shiny sides facing downward and then iron them together as I iron them to the wrong side of the fabric all in one step. It works great! These cutters are available in 1/2", 3/4" and 1" size. They are now listed on my website (Click Here) if you are interested! It is a fast and accurate way to cut hexies!

Here is my little box filled with cute little hexies that were SO easy to baste using my starch method! That pile of finished hexies is about 2" deep, All done while doing the demo in the booth!! It's so fun to make these!

Have a great day and thanks so much for stopping by today!!

Take Care,

Missie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visit my web store www.TraditionalPrimitives.com