Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop- Saaremaa Star

Welcome to my stop on the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop.

Katy and Laura are, hopefully, in full Sewing Summit mode now and I am looking forward to reading all about the Summit and their trip over the next couple of weeks. To keep them busy on their road trip they came up with the idea of creating English Paper Pieced blocks using fabrics inspired by their travel photos.

I was especially delighted when Katy asked if I would like to take part in the Blog Hop as I had two long road trips planned and was casting around looking for projects to take with me. English Paper Piecing fitted the bill perfectly. The Blog Hop carries on until the end of November, you can check out the full schedule here  On November 30th everyone will have an opportunity to link up their projects to be in the running for these fabulous prizes, so don't miss it!

Sponsored by Paperpieces.com, FabricwormPink Castle Fabrics ,  Marmalade Fabrics, the Fat Quarter Shop, WantItNeedItQuilt, and Aurifil.

Full details for competition entry can be found here.

I have been living in Riga, Latvia for four years and in that time we have done our best to explore as much of the Baltic States as possible. Our favourite trip to date was to the island of Saaremaa, off the coast of Estonia. We visited in September last year when the weather was glorious and the island really looked its best. Being an island, fishing naturally plays a big part in community life, but I don't think many of the fisherfolk look like the statue we found a few yards from our hotel in the island capital Kuressaare :)

They do look very happy though, don't they? This photo always makes me smile, it seems to me that the poor man at the back of the boat is really taking the strain, whilst his lady companion is having a great, high-stepping time:)

I used Play Crafts palette builder to generate a colour palette for my EPP block and then ordered these fabrics from Backstitch, well it was a perfect excuse to indulge in a little bit of retail therapy! I had never used a palette builder before but it was so easy I shall definitely be tempted to use it again.

Flying Geese Marine in Quilt Blocks by Ellen Luckett Baker, Redig - Grey Plank in Bella by Lotta Jansdotter and Pearl Bracelet - Green in Hello Pilgrim by Lizzy House.

The block I came up with for these fabrics was inspired by a pattern in a book of Islamic Geometric Designs by Eric Broug. These designs, which are frequently based upon hexagons or pentagons really lend themselves to this type of piecing, so I will be hunting through the book to create more blocks I am sure. I have no idea if this block has a name already, so I have christened it the Saaremaa Star!

If you would like to recreate this block you will need these templates.

They are a 2" hexagon, 3 x 1" hexagons and 6 x 1" tumbling diamond blocks. I downloaded all of the templates from here

Once you have cut out the 1" hexagons you will need to cut them in half from point-to-point.

I cut from the three fabrics 1 x 2.5" hexagon for the centre of the block, 3x 2" hexagons for the 6 half hexagon shapes and 6 x 1.5" diamond shapes. Again you will need to cut the 2" hexagon fabric pieces in half point-to-point. Baste the fabric pieces around the shapes. Then the block goes together like this

Of course once you have started EPP you may find, like I did, that one block is not enough and basting pieces is just so easy to do on the move, so you might end up with something like this!

And this!

Then once you have joined all these together you might end up with something like this!

I haven't decided exactly what to do with these yet, but with another road trip from Riga to Amsterdam in the offing, I suspect there will be a few more of them before too long :)

If you end up having a go at these blocks or any of the blocks from the Blog Hop, don't forget to link them up on November 30th!




If you haven't already, check out yesterday's post from Jessica at Life under quilts, her palette is the essence of New York and if you are new to EPP, definitely have a look at her video. Tomorrow's stop on the Blog Hop is with Catherine at Knotted Cotton