I first saw the pattern for the Ice Cream Soda quilt, an english paper pieced (EPP) quilt, last year on Instagram. The artist had used lots of blues and greens on a light background. I decided then and there that I had to try this time-intensive quilting technique. I got the pattern and made see-through templates out of laminated paper so I could fussy cut if I wanted to. Then I spend many mind numbing hours cutting out all the pieces and sorting them.

Once I had the paper pieces ready, I did my favorite part of the process. Pulled out all my fabric and made my selections! I wanted to go with a blue/green/grey palette and luckily have lots in my stash.

I saw somewhere that instead of basting your fabric over the paper pieces, you could use water-soluble glue. So I just bought a bunch of purple glue sticks (so I could see where my glue was) and got to it! Iron and organized and ready to hand-sew.

​At first, I made a small bag with a zippered pouch to organize all the tools and pieces. I took it on a trip and things were not organized enough for me, so I designed a custom EPP organizer. It holds all my essentials neatly.

The current project on my cutting table is a half-square triangle quilt for myself. A couple years ago I made a quilt for my daughter with a minky backing and it is super-warm. I concluded that I had to make one for myself.

The original idea was to make this a scrap buster quilt. Then I started piecing my 2.5" squares and realized it would take me forever. And because I want the little blocks to line up perfectly, I am squaring them at at 2". So now I am revamping my design. I will do 12" blocks of the 2" half-square triangles and put them together with bigger half-square triangles.

I'm about a quarter of the way done squaring up the blocks, but I still have a small pile of new triangles to make because I ran out of the grey contrasting fabric and had to order more. I can't wait to start piecing these into bigger blocks!

It took a 3 months, but I finally finished this sweater. I even blocked it and the fit is a-line. The shoulder shaping is a bit off-center, but hopefully, not noticeable.

Next up, The Twigs sweater by Junko Okamoto. I'm trying to figure out what color combo I want for this and weight of yarn to use.