I am once again teaching 'Hexatopia'
at Gotham Quilts in NYC!

English Paper Piecing Unique Hexagonal Blocks

The class is three sessions on Wednesdays in March:
March 13, 20, 27
Class will be held in the afternoon from 1:00pm to 4:00pm,
and in the evening from 6:00pm-9:00pm.

(Spoiler alert: the text in this post is basically a repeat of last time I announced this class, sorry regular readers!)

This class is designed to liberate and empower your English Paper Piecing adventures! Store-bought shapes fall to the wayside as we draw from an infinite vocabulary of polygons to create intricate hexagonal blocks!

Although we will spend time exploring traditional-style hexagonal blocks, the emphasis of the class will be on tweaking those traditional designs to make them unique to the individual quilter, and most of all, improvising entirely new ones unlike the quiltiverse has ever seen!

You can check out my Pinterest Page for more pictures of the kinds of blocks we'll be doing.

Notes on experience level:

Interested students should be already confident with basic English Paper Piecing. 

Luckily, it's a super-simple technique that anyone can pick up quickly. 

Email me at reynadecourcy@gmail.com for more info about getting started.

Students should also be comfortable working with small pieces, small stitches, and understand that (as with all hand-sewing), best results come with plenty of time and care. 

The good news is that

THERE WILL BE NO MATH INVOLVED. 

You won't even need to use the numbers on your ruler unless you really want to. (I don't.)

Some more specifics about what we will be doing:

On the 1st day we will warm up by drafting simple, traditional-style blocks, get comfortable with this system of working (all the things I learned the hard way), and play with fabric selection and fussycutting.

The 2nd day will be tweaking the shapes and lines of those traditional blocks to make them more unique, and most importantly, improvising entirely new ones!

We will spend most of the 3rd day exploring the Reverse Window Shopping technique that I used to design the Strawberry block from my first post, and the Montpelier Ducks block. We'll also take some time to talk about ideas for projects one might make from the finished blocks.

Deets:

The class is three sessions on Wednesdays in March:
March 13, 20, 27
Class will be held from 1:00pm to 4:00pm

All sessions will be held at
Gotham Quilts
40 West 37th Street
(between 6th & 5th avenues)
New York, NY 10018

www.gothamquilts.com

Students can sign up for the afternoon session HERE
And for the evening session HERE.
or you can call Gotham Quilts at 212-220-3958
Or just stop by. (Hours and directions here.)

Supplies:

Here's a list of the things you'll need for class:

Most items are available at the store and can be picked up before class.
Items that Gotham does NOT carry are marked with an asterisk*

- Precut paper pieces: 3.75" Hexagons, Small Pack of 12 pieces (Included in Class Fee)
    (If you already have hexagons in your stash, any hexagons with sides between 3" and 4.5" are great.)

- Colored pencils*
- Something to use as a straight-edge - at least 7" long, but try to avoid anything longer than 15"
    (The Creative Grid non-slip acrylic rulers are ideal)
- Regular ol' pencil with a good eraser* (Erasing is important)
- X-Acto knife*
- Pins
- Needles: applique sharps
- Fabric scissors (small ones are nice for this)
- Paper scissors*
- Non-fancy thread for basting (whatever you've got laying around)
- Cotton thread for piecing (we will discus thread color selection in class, but bring a selection from your stash if you've got 'em)

Fabric:
Quilting weight cotton (avoid batiks at first if you are new to English Paper Piecing)

We will be using small pieces in this class, so if you've got a stash of fat quarters and scraps, go ahead and bring a whole bunch! (Look especially for blenders, tone-on-tones, solids, and small-scale prints that you'd be excited to fussy-cut.)

If you have no stash to draw from, go ahead and get:
- 1/4 yrd or more of 1 or more interesting small-scale prints (for fussycutting!)
- 1/16 or more of 3 or more blenders or solids that look nice with the prints


And that's everything I can think of to tell you about the class!
Let me know if you have any questions!

As always, thanks for reading!!!
All the best,
Reyna