One of my favourite styles of quilts is created through 'English Piecing'....a technique my Mom taught me when I was pregnant with Christopher almost 15 years ago! Engish piecing uses papers as backing that are tacked to the fabric and then the little shapes are stitched together before the backing papers are removed....
I some very old quilts they find the backing papers are not removed and you can tell so much about the date of the quilt etc by the backing papers used.....
