English paper piecing hits and misses - cutting and basting

I love hexagons. Or rather, I love English paper piecing. I tried it for my first time the other evening and I have been loving the "exactness" it provides. I'm not very good at cutting fabric so I'm always having to "fudge" my sewing to make all the pieces come together right. But with English paper peicing that is not an issue.

As I mentioned here, I have been wanting to try this method of quilting for a while. Now I'm going to share some of my hits and misses to hopefully help others come to love this type of sewing as well.

Hexagon shape templates are measured by the length of one side. My very first hexagon I tried was a two-incher and I just felt it was too massive for my project so I downsized to 1". I found a great tutorial here at Snippets and Blabbery that also included a printable sheet of 1" hexagons. I chose to print my own templates on some lightweight cardstock I already had, but you can pick some up at your local craft store or online. I also created a template for cutting my fabric. I simply took one of the 1" shapes from my card stock and cut it out with a 1/4" seam.

I use the larger template to trace the hexagon shape onto my fabric. There are a myriad of ways to cut out fabric for paper piecing, but I am choosing to draw and cut each shape out seperately because I am fussy cutting most of my fabric. I always enjoy the process of cutting that requires little thought on my part.

The basting of the fabric around the template was easy. I am choosing to sew through my templates making a stitch about every 1/4". There are also methods that do not include stitching through the template. I also chose a bright red thread so I wouldn't have any issues finding and removing it later.

Next I'll talk about my hits and misses with joining my hexagons together.