Paper Piecing / Foundation Piecing? What's the difference? Foundation piecing uses a foundation (usually paper) to sew and flip the pieces, enabling you to get really good points where it would be difficult to piece. English paper piecing uses forms (usually paper or card stock) in different shapes (hexagon, diamonds, squares, or triangles).
So, as is usual, I sort of over did it. One project led to another, then another. Before I knew it I had so many I had to organize them and make sense of what I have.
It started innocently enough - Grandmother's Flower Garden. My Quilting Bucket List includes making a traditional quilt by hand, so what better choice than a Grandmother's Flower Garden? I even used reproduction 30s fabrics for it. To date, I have 40 out of 54 "flowers" completed. I'm going to put them together with green diamonds - so it will look something like this one. 
The Grandmother's Flower Garden got me hooked and now its a full blown addiction. Enter Katja Marek of Katja's Quilt Shoppe in Kamloops British Columbia. She has this wonderful book - The New Hexagon. In 2015 she facilitated an online Quilt Along to make a gorgeous and challenging quilt called Millefiore. It is constructed of about 14 Rosettes using the hexagons from Katja's book. This was one of the most challenging projects I've ever done. The construction is fairly straight forward, but choosing fabrics so that each round flows smoothly is quite a challenge. I got two Rosettes done and decided to put it away for a while. Even now when I look at it, I think I might want to redo some of it.
Katja teased me again the next year with Quilts on the Go. For this Quilt Along, I decided to use Asian fabrics from my stash. This lasted through the first hexie and then I figured I'd better buy some more. Now I have 3 good sized totes filled with focus Asian fabrics to fussy cut and a bunch of fillers. This project is mush easier than Millie because each hexie stands alone. Once made, the hexies were appliqued to a backing and they were quilted. So, each one could stand alone as a mug rug; put a few together and you have a table topper; put them all together and you have a quilt. I progressed a little further on this one, but I still have a few to make and then I'll whip-stitch them together into a quilt.The next couple of Quilt Alongs that Katja has done are in the "collect and do later" category. We have Hex-Plosion and Perpetually Hexie. Cool projects and I couldn't stand not adding them to my EPP collection.
Katja is not the only designer doing cool EPP stuff. Tonya Owens from HillBilly Quilt Shop designed a mystery EPP with cool fabric from Paula Nadelstern (see my previous post). Although I didn't keep current with the Quilt Along, the out-of- this-world table runner is ready to be quilted!
Another forerunner in EPP is Australian Sue Daley. I met Sue at the first Missouri Star Academy in Hamilton in May 2017. During her class, she showed (teased) us her new EPP BOM (don't ya just love the acronyms) called Round We Go. They are circles! I love them. Quilting Bits and Pieces in Eudora is hosting the BOM - starting August 2017. Again, these are in the "collect and do later" category. In addition to all being EPP, most of these projects have something else in common - they use lazer cut paper pieces available from PaperPieces.com. If EPP is an addiction, PaperPieces is an enabler. They carry all sorts of shapes in multiple sizes. They also have packages with all the pieces for projects. If its EPP you want, look no further.
Join me in my addiction!
