Adventures in Paper Piecing

Getting Down to Business

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Honestly – I am tired of the English Paper Piecing (EPP) quilt I’ve been working on since 2016 and posting about during the monthly ScrapHappy 15th of the month posting group.

In my June ScrapHappy post (ScrapHappy June 2026), I mentioned I’ve only gotten 6 more EPP Rosettes (a flower like combination of 7 paper pieced hexagons) since May’s ScrapHappy post.

Well last week I decided I needed to GET DOWN TO BUSINESS and just get the quilt FINISHED as I am tired of working on it, thinking about it, and writing about it!

So I went from 6 completed rosettes to now 20 by just making myself sit in my studio and finishing sewing sides together of rosettes for MANY hours!

Do you see the mess of papers to the left – well that all the EPP hexagon papers I had to pull out of each rosette so I can applique them to their background squares.

This is the really tedious part of EPP – removing the papers:

I think the problem is that I had my late husband help me with wrapping the fabric around the paper hexagons and he was very heavy on the glue. He did most of his work helping me create the EPP hexagons back in 2016 and 2017 so the glue on the fabric has been sitting since that time.

After removing the papers, ripping them away from the glue at times, they hexagons/”hexies” can get deformed and I have to iron them back into shape before adhering them with a little bit of fusible to their background block to be appliqued.

(20 done and waiting to be pressed back into shape with an iron)

The true problem could be that I am the “World’s Worse EPPer” – ha!

Originally I used the traditional technique of stitching/basting them in place on the paper hexies. Then another quilter showed me the faster glueing method (which has special glue pens you can buy to use) and I thought “this isn’t too bad”.

I was guilty of not demonstrating to Terry the “light application of the glue pen” and he got focused on helping me to get a lot done (production mode).

But if I keep up what I am doing – focusing on finishing – eventually it will be done. I’ve already arranged for someone to longarm machine quilt it. As soon as I have the top done I want the thing out of my house to be finished, ha! I am not domestic machine quilting it!

Okay that was my whine ;-). I will torture you to future updates on my progress…

By the way I have 2 other EPP projects I started in 2016 when I became obsessed with EPP but they are aging in the closet for now (perhaps forever?!?!?)

Postscript

You’ll probably see more blog posts from me the rest of the summer (fingers crossed) as we’ve sort of slowed down on traveling (one trip per month and sometimes just a road trip instead of the craziness we had in 2025).

I really enjoy blogging, connecting with my blogging buddies around the world, and of course reading your posts.

I am starting to run out of photo storage space on my blog though at 13 years of blogging even though I pay like $96 a year for a WordPress plan with expanded storage space. I know in the beginning I didn’t think about resizing my photos; and even though I’ve been resizing my photos for years I think I’ve just posted too many photos. I also pay like $18 a year to have my blog web address be “tierneycreates.com” instead of the free “tierneycreates.wordpress.com”.

I’ve been mulling over an overhaul and audit of my blog for a long time. It might be time to archive offline or delete my early posts. I doubt any one is going back in my blog history and reading my posts from 2014, etc.

Honestly I am challenged with revisiting the older posts myself as many of the contain stories about my fun life with my late husband who was also a quilter. I’ve been mulling over doing a summary of all the “Terry the Quilting Husband” posts in some type of memorial essay and just having that as a page on my blog and removing all the posts.

Same sort of challenge (though not comparing the passing of my spouse to my dogs) with old blog posts that feature my late dogs Sassy, Snickers and Mike. Sassy had her own blog “Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer” which I archived.

I am thinking about doing a page for the dogs also with some fun memories and stories and deleted all the old dog related posts.

I tell you memories, even if fun and wonderful, can be rough. However for my own benefit I’d like to figure out some way to keep their memory alive on my blog. Just stuff I am mulling over, no decisions made.

(This is sort of a long Postscript, it could have been it’s own blog post!)

Unknown's avatar

Published by tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Quilter, crafter, obsessive tea drinker and lover of all furry creatures (especially dogs and cats) - join me on my tierneycreates blog as I share stories from "A Crafter's Life".

27 thoughts on “Getting Down to Business”

  1. I am not close to using up my media storage yet (I pay for the $96 version of WordPress too, and I have always used small media files), but I still thought I should go back and delete some earlier posts. I used to do posts that were more about living on a farm than about textiles, and those never got many views. But I am like you, it is hard to delete them! Even if no one else ever looks at a post about me walking around with my sheep and goats, seeing the photos on screen makes them look so good, it feels like I am deleting the best version of that memory!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. I have an EPP in the works (sorta) that I’m a little afraid will get abandoned. I don’t seem to have the patience and my eyes are getting old – LOL. We’ll see. I do like your hexies and will be fun to see what you do with them!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. I’ve been blogging for many years (14, I think) and have deleted some of my early posts. Even that is a lot of work, but I have books of those posts and, as you say, it’s doubtful anyone is reading those old ones! Good luck with your decisions.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. I don’t envy you those hard decisions about storage. Thankfully I still have 1GB of free storage left, but I don’t post anywhere near as often or with as many pictures. I wonder if there is someway to print out/screen shot old posts so you can make them into a book or something.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. I don’t pay for extra storage and I have no clue if I’m close to using up my free space…gotta go look up how to find that info!! I’ve never thought about archiving my early posts…I guess if I’m close to my limit I’ll be researching that too! Good Luck!!
    I did a small EPP project, turned it into a throw pillow cover and I realized it’s not for me 🤣

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Well, surprise surprise…I DO pay for extra storage HAHAHA. I pay every 2 years so I had forgotten about it…and !!! I’m almost at my limit 5.3GB of 6.1GB used 😟 Guess I’ll be learning how to archive my old posts

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  8. I admire your tenaciousness with your EPP project! I would have cracked long ago 🙂 However, your hexis are beautiful, and it will be an amazing quilt. I think your idea about consolidating your memories and photos of Terry and your dogs is a great one – it will allow you to conserve some storage space while also creating some special pages for your loved ones.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you and I keep working on it, will be posting again sometime soon so I can bore you all with it again – ha! I recently got some great news – my local library lets you print up to 100 pages per day for free (not sure how they afford that) so I might print out some old posts and then delete them. Still working through the ideas of what to do 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  9. Pingback: 21 Ready to Applique! – tierneycreates

  10. Hi T, I enjoyed this post and had no idea your later husband was a quilter too – and it was fun to imagine him with the glue. I also smiled to imaging the  “World’s Worse EPPer” title

    Regarding running out of space, I am somewhat close to my limit but for me, it does not matter because I wanted to get more into writing and less photo content. And a while ago, I went and deleted some old posts – for various reasons- and even with deleting a lot of content, I did not see the space free up as much as I had hoped. I am not sure if that is because WP keeps multiple copies of stuff – and who knows what else takes up space – but I was disappointed by that. And! It did take a lot of time and effort and so I just stopped and made about 100 posts private. I would like to go in and delete them – or export them as a pdf file – but then I wonder if the time is well spent doing that.

    So as you ponder what to do, perhaps this blog should be archived and you can start new. Restless Jo did that and she went from “Restless Jo” to Still Restless Jo and I think that was a good idea. – “https://stillrestlessjo.com/blog/ – and so maybe Tierney Creates 2.0

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. Dear EPPer

    I agree that this method can be tedious. A while ago I learnt how to EPP without the paper. I also have one of these, unfinished and languishing in a box

    PS. I too have been wondering about the merits of blogging.

    You mention archiving old posts off line. How does one do this?

    Like

    Reply

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for your comments :-)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.