Hand Sewing a Mug Rug using English Paper Piecing

I really love English paper piecing, shortened EPP. When you sew your fabrics together, you first baste them to shaped paper templates – and those paper templates do all the work of matching up points and seams. Once you have your paper templates printed and bits of fabric assembled you can do the basting and sewing pieces together in front of the TV, in the car, out in the garden or just about anywhere.

I love having this kind of hand sewing project with me when I’m watching tv-series. Most recently I made this mug rug, and I am in love with it!

EPP might sounds more complicated than it is, so if you’re a beginner I recommend Diane Gilleland’s book on EPP. In fact, this post is part of her blog hop for that book!

Diane’s All Points Patchwork Blog Hop is a several months long blog hop on different themes where we’re gushing over EPP and her newest book All Points Patchwork – English Paper Piecing beyond the Hexagon for Quilts & Small Projects, that was published this spring. I’m part of this months hop: September Design-Your-Own-Mug-Rug hop! Though I did not design this fab pattern, it is designed by Diane herself. Though I bought it, printed it, picked out the fabrics and sewed it together all by myself.

I’m pretty proud about it. I haven’t worked with such tiny pieces before, so at first it was a bit difficult to get a hang of it, but I trudged on with patience…

As I got started with picking the fabrics my mom was here too, and picked out fabrics from my stash for her own Mug Rug! Of course by the time I saw her again she had almost finished her second one (she is a much faster crafter than I’ll ever be).

Mom’s two mug rugs, and here our three together:

I love how different they all turn out, though we’re using the same template. The pink, orange and turquoise fabrics I picked for mine all makes me happy. I love that I picked neon pink thread to embroider the middle of the flower petals. With the white and pink patterned fabric I tried to center the printed pattern on each template – and later learned from Diane that if you do that it is called fussy cut! I didn’t mean to be fussy about it, but I love the look.

I have my Flower Pow Mug Rug as a small table cloth on my bedside table. Isn’t it pretty?

More English Paper Piecing posts

I am first out in the Design-Your-Own-Mug-Rug blog hop, but there will be other posts in the hop, full of inspiration for designing your own EPP – so stay tuned!

* Check out my review of the book All Points Patchwork by Diane Gilleland. I think hand sewing is something you’ll enjoy.

* I have written about EPP before, read all my EPP posts here.

* You can get Diane’s awesome pattern and pdf tutorial for this mug rug online: flower pow mug rug and more EPP news on her blog.