Last Mandolin Block Finished!

I may deserve the title “slowest sewist” where my English Paper Piecing (EPP) projects are concerned.  My Ice Cream Soda blocks still languish, untouched in over a year.  The La Passacaglia quilt I want to make is still just a kit of tiny papers.  But after two years of a stitch here and a stitch there, I finished my last mandolin block!


I forgot that I started with an extra set of papers, so I’ve got 21 blocks instead of the needed 20 to make a quilt top.  That’s fine with me, because there were one or two that I wondered about while stitching them, so I can leave the worst one out.  I shared the first 13 of them about a year ago.  The remaining 8 I stitched in the tiny cracks in life’s transitions, and sharing them also fell through the cracks.

Still, with the last mandolin block done, I can now start on the filler blocks.  I could/should have been making them along the way, but I just never prepped the pieces for them.  That’s my biggest holdup with EPP:  the prepping!  I put it off and then do it in huge batches so I can sew for a long time without doing it again.

I promised myself I can start on a La Passacaglia quilt after I’ve proven to myself that I will actually finish an entire EPP quilt.  Additionally, I started following @alewivesfabrics on Instagram a while ago.  They post amazing Lucy Boston blocks every week.  I might have purchased some papers to make a few of those blocks as well.  That makes four EPP projects in my sewing room, but I resisted a couple others that also appealed to me.  I guess it’s time to cut and glue my filler blocks so I can get started.  I’m at the point that I’m not sure I’ll love my mandolin quilt.  I hope I end up happy with it!