Pretty Little Stars....

As you may have read from my early blog days, I was taught patchwork and quilting while I lived in France, by a stern French lady, Madame Bellagamba, 20 or so years ago. The method that she taught me was English Paper Piecing (EPP), and I loved it for the peace and relaxation  it gave me.
Since then, I've completed many EPP projects, and usually hand quilt whether I've pieced by hand or machine. However, over time, more and more of my projects have been machine pieced....to the point that I can't remember the last project I worked on completely by hand. And then I saw this, posted on another blog........

I'm afraid I'm having a Winnie The Pooh Moment (a bear of very little brain) and can't remember where exactly I saw it, but I obviously went ahead and bought my own copy.
It didn't disappoint, and I was soon looking through my stash in order to get started. My thoughts behind this particular project were that I often need a bit of handsewing, and the more portable those bits could be, the better. It's rather tricky lugging a whole quilt top to the swimming pool, or football training (though this I HAVE done!), and EPP is notoriously portable. Also, as each little block uses 2 different techniques-EPP and needle turn applique-both of which I love, it would lead to less boredom over time. Finally, each block only takes me a couple of hours to make, from cutting to final stitch, so brilliant for picking up and putting down again. I figure that this will be a long term project, that I can work on, as and when, slotting in between other projects as the mood takes me.....whilst still affording me instant handsewing satisfaction when I need it.
 The project in the book used a lovely cream and black colour scheme, and was just for a wall hanging size. I don't have much cream or black in my stash (good excuse to go fabric hunting??), and I also wanted a bigger quilt, so I've tweaked the directions a little......and so here are the beginnings.....

.......such Pretty Little Stars....though the purple one's not quite finished yet.....
Thanks for popping by. See you soon. xx