Grandmother's Flower Garden

I want to post some "in progress" pics of the hexagons I'm prepping for the hand-sewn Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt I'm making, using a technique known as English Paper Piecing, for my youngest niece's baby, due this November.
I've posted some completed "flowers" in previous posts, but here I'm going to show how I prepare the hexagons for hand piecing,

I used a precut piece of fabric from a purchased kit to make a cardboard template (using the cardboard from inside a fat quarter package). From that, I used my rotary cutter to make hexagons from the additional fabric. I used freezer paper for the piecing shapes. It gives body to the fabric as you're sewing. I drew hexagons onto the freezer paper using a sharpie and the inside of one of my nesting hexagon templates. I basically made a honeycomb pattern on the freezer paper then cut them out. At the edge of the paper were half hexes, and I put them together and used those as well.
Then, I pressed the paper shapes to the wrong sides of the fabric hexes. Freezer paper has a shiny side with a thin layer of wax (much thinner than waxed paper, which I don't recommend using - the wax is too thick and the paper is to thin), which will temporarily adhere to the fabric when ironed on at medium heat. If you don't get it quite lined up, you can peel it off and try again. The size of the paper shapes I made leave a little more than the usual 1/4 inch seam allowance, but I was using what I've got handy to make it go a bit quicker.
Once I have all the paper attached via iron, I fold the seam allowances down, using the paper as a guide. I then baste them, going through the paper. This will give me the creased edge to work with as I'm hand sewing. Once the entire quilt top is assembled, I'll remove the basting and the paper, another advantage of the freezer paper and it's temporary stick-um.
A thrifty hint: many second hand stores have craft sections where you can find spools of thread. Now, old thread can be weak and break, and there's no reliable method of testing the age of thread. However, for doing a little hand basting, like I'm doing here, it's fine. Just take off the outer, dusty layer, if necessary and use the rest. I often put my thread ends outside for the birds to use in their nests. Finches seem to like to use it. I just make sure it's in a spot where other animals aren't going to try to eat it. I have a flower pot that works nicely for this.