Hand-piecing, made exact

What English Paper Piecing is

English Paper Piecing (EPP) is a slow, satisfying way to sew a quilt by hand. You cut a small paper shape — a hexagon, a diamond, a clamshell — wrap a scrap of fabric snugly around it, baste it in place, and then whip-stitch the wrapped pieces to each other edge to edge. The paper holds every seam crisp and every angle exact while you sew; once a patch is fully surrounded, the paper slips out and gets reused.

Because the pieces are joined by hand, one shape at a time, EPP lets you build shapes a sewing machine can't easily manage — six-sided rosettes, eight-pointed stars, curved clamshells — and carry the whole project in a little bag.

The catch: it only works if the paper templates are truly exact. If a hexagon's sides don't all match to the fraction of a millimeter, the pieces won't meet cleanly and the finished quilt won't lie flat. That precision is the entire job of the template generator — every shape is drawn from exact math, not eyeballed.

The shapes & sizes

Pick from seven classic EPP shapes: the hexagon, the 60° diamond and 45° diamond (for stars), the equilateral triangle, the square, the half-hexagon (a trapezoid — a hexagon cut in half), and the curved clamshell. Every shape comes in sizes from 1" up to 4", in ½" steps.

One thing worth knowing about sizing, because it matches the acrylic templates and pre-cut papers you may already own: polygons are measured by the length of one side— a “1" hexagon” has six 1-inch sides. Clamshells are the exception and are measured by their width.

What's on a template

Each shape prints with two lines, and you use both. The bold, solid line is the finished (paper) shape — that's the piece you cut from cardstock and baste your fabric around. The dashed line sits exactly ¼" outside it: that's your fabric cut line, which adds the standard ¼" seam allowance all the way around so you have fabric to fold over the paper's edges.

This is the one rule that matters: print at 100% (actual size). Turn off “fit to page” or “shrink to fit” in your printer dialog, print, then check that little square with a ruler. Every template carries a bold PRINT AT 100% reminder for exactly this reason — if the square measures a true inch, your pieces will fit together perfectly.

How they fit together

Because the shapes are exact, they tessellate — they tile with no gaps and no overlaps. Hexagons ring up into flowers, diamonds fan into stars, clamshells scallop into rows. That's what lets you piece a whole quilt top by hand, one small patch at a time.

In the studio you pick a shape, a size, and how many pieces you need — tap Baby, Twin, Queen or King and it fills in the count for a quilt that size — then watch a live preview of both the template and the finished quilt before you commit. When it looks right, you download a print-ready PDF with every piece laid out exactly. Printing templates is included with your Quilting plan — make as many as you like.

Custom appliqué designs

Sometimes you want a shape no polygon can make — a tulip, a fox, a monogram, a favorite word to appliqué onto a quilt block. For that, describe what you're picturing in plain words and we'll generate a bold, cleanly-outlined appliqué design as an SVG: smooth edges, flat shapes, made to be traced, cut from fabric, and stitched down.

You submit the description, we generate it, and it lands right in your account — usually within a few minutes — ready to download. Custom appliqué designs are included with aKONGRA Creative membership — Studio members spend credits, or order à-la-carte.