I love hand crafts. I love having a fiddly little something to work on while I watch tv or listen to an audio book. This probably stems from the fact that I get serious anxeity and second hand embarrassment when characters on a show do something stupid.

English paper piecing is one of my favorite handwork projects. Probably because it is more portable than anything else I work on. Knitting and crochet are great, but eventually, shawls and sweaters get big. With EPP I can assemble little modular sections that I attach to the larger finished piece no matter where I am. It also doesn’t take any active brainpower either. I don’t have to remember a pattern or worry about dropping stitches.

With EPP hexagons seem to be the most popular, but my absolute favorite is the plus shape.

There are two ways to make a plus. The typical one involves assembling 5 squares into a plus. But a few years ago I found this little plus made from house shapes from Mollie from Wild Olive and I fell in love. Pluses are measured by the width of the base of the house shape, Mollie’s are 1.5″, But I sized them down a bit and I make mine with a 1″ base.

If you’d like to try out your own house shaped plus EPP you can download my template here