Kindling Quilt - A Beautiful, Easy, Low Volume EPP Quilt

I started this version of my Kindling Quilt last year during our Black Friday sale. Big events like Black Friday take weeks of preparation - madly stitching, writing, taking photos that all need to be ready by Thanksgiving to share over the long weekend. I love it! And, when it's over, I feel a bit lost and very tired. I need something soothing and easy with which to wind down. A low volume Kindling quilt was just the ticket! 

I love making scrappy low volume quilts because they don't require a whole lot of decision making to make it look beautiful. They're soft, they bring in different colours in a gentle way, and they look good no matter how you lay them out. 

Kindling Quilt is the first quilt pattern in my Hexie Handbook, a collection of 16 hexagon block quilts. All the other quilts have blocks that are pieced into 3" hexagons, but Kindling is just the basic 3" hexagon grid. This means that as soon as I basted the hexagons, they were ready to sew into rows! I laid them out on my floor, took a photo when I was happy with the layout, and made piles of the rows. Then I spent the weekend sewing hexagons together as I felt like it. I loved how fast it felt compared my usual EPP quilts. Fast is rarely my goal, but I liked it here. I liked that I was starting something new without a big commitment. It was like a refreshing palate cleanser. 

I used mostly Ruby Star Society prints for the front. I love their low volume prints so much! They make the usual florals and geometrics, but then there's always something bright and different thrown in that draws the eye. There's also a bunch of prints that I find hard to use in other quilts but that work well here. I rarely pick up high contrast stripes or butterflies in my everyday patchwork, but they fit well here, and I love how they draw the eye. 

This quilt top hung on my quilt top ladder for months after finishing the top until, after a tidy up, I found this Anna Maria Horner Wideback, set aside for a different quilt. I knew immediately that I would love it on the back of the quilt. I'll have to buy more now!

A 3" hexagon, low volume quilt is not the quilt you take on when you need a long-term, engaging project. But, it really was the loveliest thing when my creativity was low and my need for soothing stitches was high. It's easy to put English paper piecing in the 'long-term, engaging' category, and only choose those kinds of quilts to make by hand, and then only EPP when the time for those kinds of quilts is right. 

But, I love EPP especially when it's easy and mindless and low maintenance. I love when I can rest with the fabric, knowing it's going to do the beauty work for me, and when I'm not bustling to make progress so I can see if it's going to turn out like I hoped. That kind of EPP quilt makes me happy, and that's what patchwork is for!