Paper Fragments, Quilted Whole
Before a quilt became cloth, it was often paper. A letter, a ledger entry, a page torn from somewhere — folded, basted over, and hidden inside the finished work like a secret. That paper was once expensive, cut from textile rags and carefully repurposed; to waste it would have been unthinkable. Three hundred years on, the templates have changed but the impulse has not: English paper piecing remains a craft of transformation, the throwaway made structural, the fragment made permanent.
English Paper Piecing artwork by Catherine Marie Longtin
On 19 June 2026, French-Canadian textile artist Catherine-Marie Longtin leads an English paper piecing workshop at the Selvedge Quilt Jamboree, part of the Museum of the Home's What the Folk? Fest in London. Participants are invited to contribute hexagon patches to a shared, growing quilt — a collective piece built one stitch, one patch, one conversation at a time. Now based in London, Longtin works from a freehand approach that moves beyond the fixed geometry of traditional templates, producing fluid compositions with pared-back palettes and the subtle tonal shifts that hand-stitching produces.
English Paper Piecing artwork by Catherine Marie Longtin
The technique is straightforward in principle. Fabric is wrapped and basted around paper or card templates, and each piece is then sewn by hand to the next, building up repeating patterns one seam at a time. Once a shape is joined on all sides, the paper is removed, leaving the cloth to hold its own geometry.
English paper-pieced bed cover, 1850-75 (made), artist unknown. Donated to the V&A museum by Miss Amy E Tomes (b.1876) daughter of Lady Elizabeth (Lizzie) Tomes (d.1935) and Sir Charles Sissmore Tomes (1846-1928).
The origins of the craft stretch back at least three hundred years. In its earliest incarnation it was an aristocratic leisure pursuit: paper was costly, often repurposed from letters or documents, and the labour was painstaking. As paper became more affordable through the nineteenth century and printed templates began appearing in publications such as Godey's Lady's Book in the 1830s, the craft gradually opened up to a wider audience. The hexagon followed, inspiring generations of makers to piece their fabric scraps into something lasting. Recycling was always part of the story, even in wealthy households: unpicked seams, tailors' offcuts, fragments of meaningful cloth all found their way into the frame.
Portrait of Catherine Marie Longtin
Longtin came to English paper piecing during the pandemic, drawn to its slow, methodical process at a moment when life had contracted. "I see my [fabric] stash as my palette," she says. "My favourite trick is to juxtapose fabrics that are similar but not quite the same, to invite the eye to question what it sees." Her work is minimalist in sensibility, with the irregularities that only handwork imparts — a contemporary thread in a tradition three centuries long.
The paper will eventually come out. The cloth will hold its shape. But something of the process — the time, the handling, the decisions made stitch by stitch — remains in the work. Longtin's workshop at the Selvedge Quilt Jamboree on 19 June is an invitation to experience that for yourself.
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Further information:
The Selvedge Quilt Jamboree takes place on Friday 19 June 2026, 10.30 - 4.30 p.m., at the Museum of the Home, as part of the What the Folk? Fest.
Catherine Marie Longtin's workshop is included with your ticket.
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Image Credits:
Lead: An English Paper Piecing artwork in progress, by Catherine Marie Longtin.
All further images as credited in captions.