If you are talking about sewing individual squares together, then I would probably opt for hand piecing. However, I definitely would not use the English paper technique for this; I would simply use a running stitch to sew the squares together.
It would be considerably faster to machine sew strips together first, then cut and machine sew together some more.
I started one several decades ago before I knew much of anything about quilting, hand sewing squares together. I started in one corner. Not quite sure what I did wrong, but when it got larger I realized that it was no longer square. Still have that huge wonky triangle stored somewhere in the house.........