Things Fons and Porter don't tell you

Yesterday IPTV showed an episode of F&P where they showed you how to do English paper-piecing with temporary spray adhesive instead of pasting around all the little shapes. They used pentagons to make a 3-D cupped shape instead of hexagons, but the beauty of technique shows is my ability to extrapolate...

So off I went to my LQS (as always, forgetting the envelope with my Iowa quilt shop punch cards...), and they had die-cut cardstock 1" hexagons, so I was able to try this out right away without cutting.

Now, when F&P did this, they had no problems at all.

When I did this, the temporary adhesive was too temporary--the papers did not stick to the fabric long enough for me to complete the outer layer of the Grandmother's Flower shape. It did, however, cause: my fingers to stick to paper, fabric, and each other; cat hair to stick to myself, the paper, the fabric, and the thread; paper and fabric to stick to The Cat.

Eventually I worked out a complicated system of adhesive and paper clips...the whole process still seems horribly time-consuming and not yet relaxing.




Oh, and the Grout Museum in Waterloo didn't call me for their annual "Treasured Quilts from Beloved Iowa Quilters" show AGAIN. *snicker*