Island Batik EPP Challenge

It's the last Island Batik challenge of the year!  It's hard to believe it's December and a new year is right around the corner.  December's challenge is EPP, or English Paper Piecing.  I enjoy English Paper piecing, though I limit it to small projects.  It's great for taking on trips!  I knew I didn't want to do standard hexi flowers/Grandmother's Flowers.  I poked around Pinterest and Etsy to see what I could find.  I stumbled upon EPP animal patterns by Laurel of Porcupine Sews and fell in love.  It took me a bit to decide between her patterns; I loved the bat and the raccoon and the Luna moth, but ultimately I picked the unicorn.

We get the list of challenges at the start of the year and the planner in me loves that!  I took a trip in July to visit my best friend who lives in Massachusetts and EPP is the prefect travel project, so I prepped my pieces in early July.  I used assorted purple scraps, plus Bluebird for the eye and Lemonade for the horn, both basics.  The purples were from multiple lines, Lavender Fields, Tickled Pink, and Black Pearl for sure, plus others I'm not sure about.  

 The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Schmetz, and Aurifil.

I sewed here and there on the trip and was making decent progress.  I knew I would finish at some point at home.  Then my flight home was delayed.  It ended up being an 8-hour delay, which left me with like 10 hours in the airport when combined with my original arrival time.  I finished the unicorn with hours to spare!  

I had the background fabric I intended to use with me, but of course I did not have an iron.  At this point I had unknown time ahead of me and literally nothing else to do, so I decided to start stitching to the background even though I couldn't iron the unicorn or the background fabric.  I got it about 80% stitched down before finally getting home.  These photos were taken at the airport!

 

My plan was always to use my EPP to decorate a ByAnnie bag that I had been wanting to make, an older pattern called Power Trip.  I work at a community college and while I'm in the library the majority of the time, I do have meetings and such in other buildings, especially pre-pandemic. I like to take basic supplies with me because I never know what will be there or what I'll need, so for the past few years I've carried a boring pencil pouch with supplies. The Power Trip struck me as the perfect way to transport supplies across campus in style.   

  

filled with everything I might need on campus

The unicorn fit on the front of the bag perfectly! The background for the unicorn is the basic Sky.  The binding fabric is from Napa Valley, and the fabric for the rest of the bag is from Butterfly Blooms, originally intended for my Ultimate Travel Bag interior pockets but I used mesh instead and earmarked the beautiful Mini Leaf in Moonstone fabric for this Power Trip.  I use Schmetz topstitch needles for all my ByAnnie projects. I used a variety of Aurifil threads for the EPP hand piecing and color 2520 Violet in 50 weight to construct the bag.  

I love my bag and the unicorn makes me smile.  The EPP pattern lists this as a patch and I'd love to make another and put it on the back of a jacket or a long-sleeve shirt.  This ends my third year as an Island Batik Ambassador.  I love working with Island Batik and their gorgeous fabrics and I thank them for the opportunity.