What I am working on: lots of EPPing everywhere

Since I knew that I was going to need some hand-sewing projects to take with me for our family's summer vacation trips during the summer, I tried during April-May to prepare blocks and templates for as many of my EPP (English paper piecing) projects as I had time for.

(Like in the photo above, where I'm trying to mend my daughter's unicorn horn and stitching on some blocks for Secret Hearts.)

If you check my current WIPs and UFOs in April, I had a total of 6 active(ish) EPP projects at the start of summer:

1. the Second Christmas quilt (started)
2. R(ed) is for Rita (started)
3. My Secret Hearts 2019 birthday quilt (started)
4. The ”Lucy’s Terrace”-quilt (not yet started)
5. A spring/summer version of the Kingfisher quilt (not yet started)
6. the Farmer's Wife 1920 quilt (not yet started)

Since then, I must say it’s nice to see how much progress you get done if you happen to have everything prepped and ready to sew. I don’t know how those who whip-stitch their EPP pieces manage, because I find it so great to have my EPP blocks already assembled with painters tape when I sew.

I bought four small plastic boxes at the beginning of summer too, and have been storing projects 1-3 in them so they can be grabbed and worked on. Two pf these boxes are small enough that they fit in my handbag/backpack, and those are the ones that have been travelling with me. As soon as a block is done, it gets taken out and gets pinned on the design wall.

I have learned that it takes me about 35-40 min to get one hexie flower block sewn together. It makes it easier to guess how many blocks I need to bring for a trip.

The following summary is just a visual remainder for myself where I’m currently at on these projects.

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Second Christmas has gotten a lot of prep work done, mostly the red ”background” pieces. Since these blocks are the biggest of my project blocks, I’ve been neglecting them a bit, sewing-wise, and instead concentrated on those with smaller blocks.

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R(ed) is for Rita is the one that has gotten a lot of blocks done. This photo was taken in May (2019) and now (in July) all those white got finished. I can start on sewing the colored blocks, yay!

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My Secret Hearts has gotten the layout planned, like you see in the photo, and also some of the red heart blocks (the filler blocks) done. The jewel-heart blocks are appliqued to the background fabrics, and one block takes about 15 min to get done.

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Lucy's Terrace has all of its templates already cut out. I need to buy the pattern (from Jodi over at Tales of Cloth) and get started on the fabric fussy cutting for the pieces.

I’ve left this one intentionally waiting, because I need to get the projects above more-or-less finished to be allowed to start on this one. The blocks are going to be huge, so working on them will need space and time.

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Summer Kingfisher has all the hexie templates ready, and all the fabrics already prepped for the quilt top. I just need to fussy cut fabrics and prep the 46 hexie flowers this project needs.

What I have been thinking about, however, is how to assemble the top. My Autumn Kingfisher I totally machine pieced together, and then appliqued the flowers on top. And I’m a bit undecided still, but I think I’d like to hand-piece together this one. Hand-sew the hexie flowers to the diamond background pieces, and then hand-piece the top together. That way, I think I might get corners that match up perfectly. 

We’ll see.

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Farmer's Wife 1920 is still on the cutting-out-card-stock-templates-stage. This takes time, as I’m using gruel and other food containers to get the cardboard from, and things have to get eaten so I can get to use the boxes for crafting.

I did finally decide upon the size of my blocks! The original ones are 6 x 6 inches finished, and I don’t need a huge quilt from all the 111 blocks, so I’m making mine 9 x 9 cm instead. That’s about 3.5 x 3.5 inches and exactly how big the blocks are on the pages in the book.

To that will still be added 9 x 3 cm borders on two sides, just so that they will be easier to sew together immediately into the quilt top. I’m also following the layout provided for free by Paper Pieces (they sell already prepped templates for the same quilt) that has the blocks sewn together numerically, so I can then prep and sew them beginning from block 1.

I figured I could make the EPP templates for the blocks really easily: just cut out a 9 x 9 cm piece of card-stock, copy the block template pattern onto it, cut out the pieces and then fabric prep and glue-baste as usual. We’ll see how that works out when I get to that point, because for now projects numbered 1 to 3 need to be done first.

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And that, as they say, is it :)
At least, so far it is, and it's not a race, so there's time to work on all of these a little bit at a time. 

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