When I first started quilting, I hand-pieced my blocks. I liked hand work,but mainly my machine piecing was terrible. It helped me to lightly draw the quarter-inch seam lines on my fabric pieces. Now I’m pretty good at eyeballing it, but back then not so much! I used lightweight cardboard (like cereal box cardboard) to make my templates.
if you really like hand work, you might enjoy English paper piecing. That’s where you have little paper shapes (the “paper” is more like what index cards are made from) and you wrap fabric onto the shapes. The pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Eventually the paper gets pulled out. It’s such fun and so portable.