Question on Grandmothers Flower Garden - what do you do?
 

I've fallen in love with the hand sewing that goes with EPP the hexigons and making various versions of the GFG quilt. I've always left the paper in until I have the entire top done. I'm currently working on my first Queen size GFG and attaching the flowers to each other. Because of the size, with the paper left in it is getting unwieldly work work with. I'm tempted to remove all the papers from the flowers and then attach them to each other. My concern is will this work well? Will I end up with all sorts of wonkiness from the hexis getting pulled without the paper to support them.

I'd love to hear what everyone else does and what their experience has been.

Are you working in sections, or joining the flowers across the whole width of the quilt?

If you break a queen size quilt into, say, 9 sections, and then put those sections together like a 9-patch block, you will never be dealing with a big heavy pieced, except for the last 2 seams (which are unavoidable).

If you still feel it's too heavy, and really can't deal with even a 30"x30"-ish piece, then you can take the paper out of all the inner hexies in the sections, with the exceptions of the last 2 rounds (just to keep it stabilized).

I too am working on a grandmother's flower garden quilt and found the same problem... once you get to the third round it's very hard to handle. So, what I started doing, and it seems to be working, is to take all but the last round of paper out. That way the inside is far more pliable but the outside edge stays firm until it's sewn to the connecting flower. Seems to be working well so far.

Just to clarify.... once the 6 hexes are sewn around the center, I remove the center paper. when the 12 pieces are sewn around the outside of the first 6 pieces, I remove the 6 paper pieces and so on. I hope this helps a bit.

I work the same way too........and it's going fine like that I think

as you go along you can remove papers in areas that are (finished) keep the papers in to any pieces that you will still be sewing to-
so you can certainly remove papers as you go along- just leave the outer pieces intact to have stability as you sew them together.

When all the sides are sewn on a hexi, you can safely take the paper out. I did a queen size top and it was workable that way. Now only the outer edge of the quilt has papers.

Thanks for all your input. Right now I am up to about 60 x 40 and since I want to reuse all the templates it is awkward. I'm going to remove all but the edge rows of papers and keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't start to pull wonky. It would be much easier to add the additional flowers if most of the quilt top were flexible.

Here is my two cents worth - I am doing a GMFG now and I accidently pulled one of papers out before sewing the last side to another hexie - what a pain in the #$#@ it was to sew without the paper in it - so don't remove the paper untill all 6 sides are attached. I remove them and just leave one row with paper. Some people use a hole punch in the middle of each piece of paper so you can pull it out with a crochet hook and use again.