Hexdens and English Paper Piecing

If you follow me on Instagram you have maybe seen these pink English Paper Piecing flowers that I’ve been working on here and there.  I’ve been getting questions about them so I thought I’d do a blog post about this project.

 

A few months ago I was in a quilt shop in Spokane Washington and spotted a little EPP (English Paper Piecing) display that was the sweetest little flower, and I instantly fell in love!  But the shop was sold out of the templates.  I finally tracked down the pieces at paperpieces.com – they have EVERYTHING there!  If you’re into EPP, that’s a fun place to shop.  



The shape is called Hexden (hexagon + dresden) and paperpieces.com has two variations and several sizes.  You can see in the photo above that I went with the 1” size.  That 1” refers to the length of the side that forms the base of each flower petal, which is also the length of one side of the hexagon that forms the flower center.

 

Want to see the difference between the two Hexden variations?  Check out the two flowers below.  The difference is subtle, but in the bottom flower, the petals are a little taller and rounder.  That’s variation 2.  And that’s the one that I preferred for this project.  For both variations (in the 1” size) you can cut all pieces from a 2.5” scrap, including the hexagon center.  That's pretty handy since 2.5" scraps are easy to come by around here!



Here’s what’s in the package of paper pieces – enough pieces to make 36 blocks.



I dug through my scrap bin and pulled out most of the pinks.  Then they were stacked into  similar piles and pinned together in groups of 6. 



Ready for basting!  I’ll be back in a later blog post to show you how I keep everything organized, and how I glue baste the curves of the petals. 

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great weekend!