Make A Pentagon Bowl With English Paper Piecing

Have you always wanted to learn more about English Paper Piecing but you weren’t sure where to start? I love creating free tutorials for easy projects that give you an introduction to fun techniques. You’ll discover all of these basics when you hand stitch the Pentagon Bowl Project.

If you’d like to make your own FREE Pentagon Bowl, simply add your details below and the PDF sewing pattern will be emailed to you instantly (be sure to check your spam folder if you can’t find it).

NOTE: This project is for PERSONAL USE ONLY for sewing at home and/or teaching another person to sew FOR FREE. Reusing or repurposing free Molly and Mama tutorial instructions, templates and images for paid classes, or distributing the materials in classes, to groups, or for commercial purposes, without permission, is strictly prohibited. For clarification, or to seek a commercial arrangement, please contact Molly and Mama.

This Pentagon Bowl is different to traditional English paper piecing. After you’ve glue basted your EPP papers (the cardstock paper shapes) with your different fabrics, you stitch them together. But instead of removing the papers after they’ve been stitched, you leave the cardstock in place. It helps provide structure for your bowl to retain its shape.

Making the Pentagon Bowl

After you have downloaded the pattern, you will need to gather your supplies. You can use 6-12 different fabrics if you’d like a different print for every pentagon. The version in the pattern features the ‘My Favourite Things’ Collection by Elea Lutz for Poppie Cotton.

Once the inner bowl and outer bowl have been glue basted and whip stitched together, it’s time to whip stitch both the bowls together to complete your pretty fabric bowl. Use quilting clips or pegs to align your pentagon edges and keep them in place as you stitch. You can see this process in the image below.

Everything you need to know to create your pentagon bowl is included in the free pattern. I also have a great tutorial (including videos) on the basics of English paper piecing that you can save as a reference if you’re looking for more information for hexagons and other projects. Just click the link below.

Gallery of Inspiration

I’ve made quite a few of these Pentagon Bowls now and I just love how different they look depending on the fabric that’s been used. Scroll down to see lots of inspiration and ideas.

I love this bowl made with different shades of the Liberty Tana Lawn Wiltshire print. Using different colourways of the same print can be so effective! The spooled embroidery floss in the bowl is from Aurifil.

This version of the Pentagon Bowl was made with the ‘My Favourite Things’ Collection by Elea Lutz for Poppie Cotton. It’s filled with candy covered chocolate eggs for Easter.

Another Easter version of the bowl, this one was made with lots of different scrap fabrics. The fabric was fussy cut to show off cute bunnies, and other adorable Easter motifs.

This blue toned bowl was made with the Summer prints from the Tilda Creating Memories collection. I love the polka dot in the bowl base.

You can see the same bowl here, but with the rust Autumn shades from Tilda Creating Memories used for the outside.

And this image gives you an idea of the size of the bowl made with the pentagon template provided with the pattern. If you’d like to make smaller or larger bowls, you can either scale the template pages up or down before you print them on lightweight cardstock. Or buy different sized precut papers.

If you do make a bowl, be sure to share it on social media. Tag me @mollyandmama on Facebook and Instagram, and use the hashtag #PentagonBowl. I can’t wait to see your versions!

For more English paper pieced projects, visit the store or see my other free tutorials.

Happy stitching, Lauren x