E

English Paper Piecing Session 5: Diamonds

National Quilters Circle Editors
Duration:   8  mins

Description

In this session you will learn how to baste a diamond shape. You will also learn what to do with the points of the diamonds, depending on whether that point will be covered by another piece in the final assembly process.

Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.

Make a comment:
characters remaining

No Responses to “English Paper Piecing Session 5: Diamonds”

No Comments

The last common English paper piecing shape that we're gonna cover in this class today is the diamond. This is one that can be a little bit tricky when you are basting it, whether you're doing it using your hand sewing needle and thread or using your glue because you have some really sharp points here at the top and the bottom. Now, I'm using for an example, this is a two-inch template. I already have my fabric cutout, and I have my stencils I've created to get my paper cut out. But at the very beginning, I mentioned that I like to use some precut quilting bundles, precut quilting fabrics, for English paper piecing a lot of times.

And this is a really handy shape and size of shape to be using, if you are working with these charm packs, like I mentioned from the beginning. Because one charm pack, you can actually take your piece, fold it in half, lay your template down, and with just two cuts, you can really quickly and easily, actually three cuts, 'cause you'll need to cut the fold, but you can get two of these diamond shapes from one of your little charm pack squares really quickly and easily. So if you can find the right precut quilting fabric that works really well with the size of whatever certain shape you're using, it's always good to have that pairing, so that's what I recommend fabric for using with this size and shape. But, so here we have our diamond. So we are going to do first, how you're going to baste this using your hand sewing needle and thread 'cause that's what we showed first with the hexagon.

Again, just like when we were doing any other basting, we want to stick our paper to our fabric first. You see, I just used some fun card stock here, so it doesn't really matter what color your paper is. We want to tie a knot in the thread, so you can do this, whichever is your preferred method. I already have a knot tied in mine. And now, when you are working with your diamond here, these are the two points that are gonna be the hardest to work with, so I like to start here in the edge of one of your sides, just not at one of those corners.

So I am actually gonna start down here at this edge. Again, I'm gonna fold my fabric around the edge of my paper and take a stitch, and I'm gonna do, when I'm working with a shape that has finer points like this, or I call them points or your points, I'm sure there's another way to say that, but when you have lots of points like this, it's sometimes easier to take your stitches closer together or to do more stitches than when you're working around a more subtle shape like that hexagon, or if you're doing something like an octagon or something like that. So I'm gonna continue working my way around this shape. Again, going down one way with your stitching, going up one way with you're stitching, and I'm going about every half inch or so as I work my way up to the point of this diamond. So what I'm gonna do is, instead of trying to, like with the hexagon, you were able to sort of hold one half in place and then fold and actually stitch 'em both at the same time.

Since this one is a little bit harder to get to, I like to stitch all the way up and sort of off one edge first. So I'm gonna bring another stitch right up here, make sure I get through my fabric, so I am right at the point of the diamond. Now I'm going to fold down the other side of my fabric, and you can see my fabric is now covering up where my thread came out. So rather than trying to take another stitch down through that paper, I'm just going to slide my needle underneath my fabric and go just through the fabric and pull these two points together to overlap right there at that point, so that way I'm not having to take two stitches through the paper at that point. Now I can continue on along the edge of my shape, like so.

Again, going about every half inch. Oops, if you kinda get any tangles in your thread, you wanna make sure that you get those out before you continue on. Coming down to this point, so this is one of the more subtle points. So you can just fold one side first, hold it in place with one hand, fold the second side up, and now stitch them both at the same time, like so. Now, we've got one more of these sharp points to deal with, so I'm gonna stitch my way over to it.

Like so. A couple more stitches here. Again, I'm gonna do my next stitch is going to come up right at the point of that paper template, so you can see right where the point is. I want to bring my needle up right at that point, like so. Now, I'm going to, oops.

Fold over my next side, and then, rather than going through the paper again, I'm gonna bring my needle up, just underneath that fabric side I just folded down, just through the fabric, and go ahead and take that stitch and pull those two edges together. Now I can do just one more stitch to finish off this shape here, and then I can go ahead and just tie a knot, so I can go ahead and flip it over to the right side. Again, I'm gonna take just a little stitch, pull until I have just a loop of thread left, put my needle through that loop, tie my knot, and clip it with my long thread tail. So again, this is another shape where, because it's a tessellating shape, and you have all of your pieces that are going to fit together. So here we have a good example, 'cause we have multiple of them all cut out.

You can see how, when you put all of your shapes together like so, there's gonna be no space in between. So because of that, this little tail right here, you don't have to worry about it, because it's going to be covered up by the next piece that you put on. So, but I will show you how you can tuck those tails in, if you need to, if the shape is gonna be on the outside edge. So it's gonna be the same difference, if you are using your glue to baste the shape in place. So again, I'm going to start along one long side of my shape, go ahead and put some glue right along there.

I'm gonna fold it up, press it down in place, and, if you're using a different glue, so if you decided to use a glue stick or one of the different glues, it's better to put less glue and press it down and hold it longer and let it dry a little bit than it is to just put a lot of glue on it. So now I'm going to work on this long side here and get it pressed in place. Now, with this corner, so similar to when I was doing my stitch, and I glued, or I stitched one side of the fabric down first and then put the other one on top, I'm going to do the same thing. So I'm going to hold one side back out of the way. I'm gonna make sure I have glue, right on the tip of my paper template there, press my fabric over so that it is glued in place.

Now, I'm gonna put a little bit of glue on top of the fabric, and I'm gonna fold this next side over. So, the first fabric that gets folded around the edge gets glued to the paper template, the second one that gets folded around the edge gets glued to that first fabric that was put in place. So I'm gonna go ahead and do the second side here. So again, this one I'm gonna come all the way down to the very point. I have glue all the way to the end of my paper template.

Now, I'm gonna flip it around, do this side here, and this end now gets glue on top of the fabric, and I'm gonna glue the fabric to itself right here at the corners. And then I can just continue pressing all the way along the edge. And so, again, as with any other shape, so much quicker to baste it using your glue than with your hand sewing needle and thread, but you can do both. Now, if this is going to be a shape, as I mentioned, that's going to be on the outside edge of your design, and you're not going to have another shape, you know, stitched over the top to hide that little tail, what you're gonna wanna do is, fold it back down and out of the way, so it's not showing. So I, if you're using your hand sewing needle and thread, you're gonna do the same thing, just with a stitch, but you're going to be placing a little bit of glue or taking a stitch and folding that tip of the triangle back down over the edge, and then, when you turn it over, you have a nice point of your diamond, and you don't see any extra little tails hanging out around the outside edges of those diamonds.

So this is how you are going to baste the diamond in place, whether you are going to use your hand sewing needle and thread or your glue. Just make sure that you are really getting these points perfect and accurate when you are stitching 'em or gluing 'em, it's gonna make assembly of your English paper piecing pieces much easier, and it's just going to look cleaner when you're done. So that's how you're going to baste and prepare your diamond English paper piecing shapes.

Get exclusive premium content! Sign up for a membership now!