Spring Mystery Project Sew Along

The long awaited Spring Mystery Project Sew Along for Sip Tea and EPP will start next Thursday, April 7th, 2022 and we hope you can join us this time as well and have some fun sewing together with us.

Hexagon Templates

Welcome to the Sip Tea and EPP party! Irina @nordiccrafter and I are very excited to start our new adventures this year with a Mystery Hexagon Project. And as the name suggests, you will need hexagons for this sweet item that we are going to sew in unison.

I have put together a one page file for your convenience. All you need to do is to print this page out and cut out your own shapes. Please check the 1" square to make sure that the hexagons are of the right size. And one more thing - don't forget to use a separate pair of scissors for this step! :-)

Happy partying! Larisa xo

EPP Necessities Sew Along

Welcome to English Paper Piecing Necessities Sew Along!

I am very excited to be sewing with all of you together over the next one month! This is a low key relaxed sew along that will be running for 4 weeks on Instagram from the 4th of February til the 28th of February by the hosts of the Sip Tea and EPP party Irina and I.

Tutorial: A Needlebook with a Hexagon Flower

I love small and quick makes that require little time to complete and let you fuss with tiny details. With the Sip Tea and EPP party in full swing, I get constantly asked where to start if you are new to English Paper Piecing and not sure what to make with all the hexagons you are making. I thought that I would share with you an updated version of the Stitching Notes Needlebook that you can beautify with a hexagon flower. It is small and it would fit perfectly in any project bag, pouch or your EPP box. I hope that this small make would be a good starting point for you,  and it would inspire you to give English Paper Piecing technique a go and open to you a new exciting world of slow hand stitching. 

My Quilty Therapy

Tonight, during our Sip Tea and EPP party, we are going to talk about the benefits of hand sewing for our mental and physical health. If you do some research, you will find a countless number of articles written on this topic, so I thought maybe instead of repeating what has already been written, I would share a short personal story with you. I am a private person and I don't like talking about my emotions, feelings and struggles, but if this story can help even one person to find some comfort and healing in slow hand sewing, then it would make me really happy.

Sip Tea and EPP: Introduction

Welcome to our first week of Sip Tea and EPP party!

I am very excited to start a new season of slow hand sewing and to share this journey with lovely Irina from @nordiccrafter and all of you.

Sip Tea and EPP Party 2021

Happy New Year, my dear friends! I hope the year has started on a good note for you and you are looking forward to another year of slow hand sewing and creating to warm your heart.

Embellishing Hexagon Flowers with Floral Motifs

This month during our Sip Tea and EPP party we are talking about adding embellishments to your English Paper Piecing projects. There are many ways you can beautify your hexagons or any other shapes of your EPP projects by adding small embroidery motifs, foundation paper piecing designs or some hand quilting. These small additions will give your work a unique and charming touch.

How I Make Hexagon Flowers for Grandma's Love Quilt

I have been asked multiple times how I put together my hexagon flowers for the "Grandma's Love" quilt that I am working on at the moment. I thought I would take you behind the scenes and show you the process from choosing the prints for each hexagon flower to finishing the hand embroidery in the centre of each flower.

Sip Tea and EPP Party 2020

Welcome to our second season of Sip Tea and EPP Party! Lauren from Molly and Mama and I are very excited to finally start this season of slow stitching to warm your heart. This year we are a bit more organised and prepared as you can see. We have a list of themes ready for the next twelve months so you can get ready too and prepare all your supplies, projects and questions you might have.

Grandma's Love

My Grandma has a special place in my heart and her love still warms my heart every day. It's the small things like freshly backed sugar rolls, late night tea, a bunch of flowers, a dinner I am cooking that bring memories of her. Our pretend games we used to play together, our trips to the lake and the river near our summer holiday house, our laughs and our tears - it's all a part of who I am now. My brother and I used to spend almost every summer with our grandparents. Each spring our parents would pack us up ready for the summer adventures away from home and send us on a plane trip to a different city for the next three exciting months. It was always fun, and I have to say that we hardly missed our parents, but if our parents managed to take some time off work and come spend some summer days with us all, it always felt extra special.

Sip Tea and EPP: Being Productive

This week we are talking about being productive, and it can have different meanings to all of us. Some can sew an entire quilt in a week and call this being productive, while for others just a tiny simple make can feel like a great achievement as well. It all depends on our own personal situations, skills and needs. We should not compare our own abilities and the size and the number of creations that other can do, but rather be driven by what feels right for each of us personally. I am going to speak from my own experience as a maker of small things because this is what is important to me and this is what makes me feel good. I sew because I love it and I sew because it makes me feel great, I also love sharing what I learn along the way. Some days I can sew for a few hours, some just for a few minutes and there are days when I feel totally unproductive and stuck, and not able to sew anything at all for various reasons. I worked out that I have to MAKE TIME for just a few tiny stitches a day to help me feel better and get me back on track with sewing.

Sip Tea and EPP: Thread Conditioning

This week at out Sip Tea and EPP Party we are talking about thread conditioning. Before I go any further and share my experience, I would like to say that it is very important to do your own search, try things out and decide what works for you personally. We all use different techniques, threads, needles, fabrics, so it is extremely important not to simply follow others, but rather find what works best for you.

English Paper Piecing Wedding Ring

Have you heard about the Sip Tea and EPP party me and Megan of Dolly Henry are having every Sunday on Instagram? It's a lot of fun and anyone who loves English Paper Piecing can join us using the #sipteaandepp hashtag. The idea is to share the EPP projects you are working on, encourage each other and share tips, tricks and interesting ideas.

"A Stitch in Time" Book Tour

I could not be more excited and honoured when Sharon Burgess of Lilabelle Lane Creations asked me to participate in her book tour for her new book "A Stitch in Time" published by Tuva Publishing. I have been following Sharon's work for some time now and I am working on a quilt using her Tenderness pattern that I absolutely love and that has a special place in my heart. So I of course said yes because Sharon's work is amazing, inspiring and involves a lot of English Paper Piecing to make you appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of this technique. The book features 18 darling English Paper Pieced projects that combine some embroidery, applique, quilting  and is complemented with delicate tiny details. Bags, mats, pincushions just to name a few.

Hexie Talk: Part II

I hope you enjoy making hexagons as much as I do. I have a small constantly growing stack of them sitting on my shelf waiting to be sewn into my Hexie Therapy Quilt. Once you have a few hexagons, you can start the most wonderful and satisfying part - hand sewing your hexies together. 

Hexie Talk: Part I

Lovely hexagons! Large, small, tiny ones, with cute prints, with flowers or simply plain ones. They are so much fun to make! What I love about English Paper Piecing (EPP) is that it is a highly portable way of hand sewing that does not require a lot of material and there are hundreds (if not more) ways of using finished hexies in your projects. It's a very therapeutic type of sewing as well, calming and relaxing.