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!)

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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".

19 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!

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  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!

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  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.

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  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.

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  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 🤣

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    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

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