English Paper Piecing: Ice Cream Soda Quilt

 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.

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Hand-sewing was a challenge. My hands would get sore after 30 minutes, so it's been a super-slow process. So far I have about 25 blocks done. This will definitely be a multiyear project.