Hooked on Hexagons

I was first introduced to English Paper Piecing (EPP) at the American Quilter's Society Paducah 2011 show. Since 2009, the Momcat and I go down to Paducah each April for the show to take classes, meet famous quilters and shop for more fabric! Every year when the Paducah registration guide comes out, we each print it out and then have long phone calls where we plan out potential schedules and classes, trying to make sure we get a good balance of everything we want to do in the limited time of the show.

Last year, I talked the Momcat into attending a lecture and demonstration on English Paper Piecing. She wasn't too overexcited about this particular lecture, but went along with it since I was so interested. And then it happened. The thing I'd read about on so many blogs. We both were hooked on hexagons.

If you've never done English Paper Piecing-you MUST try it. It's relaxing, it's portable, it's creative and it makes use of all those little scraps of fabric that we all have hanging around. It's the next best thing since the Pumpkin Spice Latte returned to Starbucks.

When the Momcat and I were developing ideas and projects for our first craft fair using EPP I quickly realized that I'd need to find a way to organize and store the basted hexagons, especially since I wanted to have a lot made up ahead of time to provide lots of options for making projects.

Enter...the Card Catalog I purchased from the university surplus store for $25.

It currently sits in the family room because it's solid oak. When we moved in, I was informed that under no circumstances was it going to be moved up the staircase to my studio space. Since I do most of my EPP downstairs in front of the TV anyway, it is in the perfect location to store my hexagons!

I keep them sorted by color, one per drawer. I use some of the surrounding drawers to store paper pieces, cut fabric pieces, designed flowers (in Ziploc bags) and finished projects.

I probably have several hundred in the drawers already, with the left drawer below being the fullest. You can see there's still plenty of room in each drawer so I just keep on basting and adding to the collection!

Are you hooked on hexagons or other EPP projects? How do you store your basted pieces?