Kindling Quilt - A Hexagon Quilt Made From My Fabric Rejects
Sometimes I make a quilt because I want to tidy up my scraps and I enjoy that most when I'm cutting fabric for a quilt at the same time. Sometimes I get a new idea for how I can make one of my patterns. Sometimes I just need something quiet and easy and I choose two colours that I can sew together over and over again. And sometimes I have a bunch of basted triangles that I just unpicked from a quilt I didn't like and I'm wondering what to do with them!
These pink joining triangles started their life becoming a Hexie Harvest Quilt, but once I attached them all to the hexagon blocks and laid them out, I didn't like it. And so (after a year of putting it off!), I finally unpicked every triangle and replaced them with clear, crisp white.
Now, what to do with a few hundred pink triangles?
Hexagons, of course!
I couldn't just let them sit there, and I couldn't just throw them away, so I pulled open my fabric drawers, and moved these pink triangles around the various colours, waiting for inspiration. It struck over the navy blues and blacks.
I hardly ever use black in my quilts, so that section is full of prints that have come in fat quarter bundles. Many of these are luscious, but tricky, large florals and novelty prints. It gave me the idea to use a bunch of prints I never use otherwise, and then I added a few basics and teals to spread it out a bit.
These large florals and tricky prints would be just perfect for 3" hexagons.
Simple, Beautiful Hexagons
I settled on my Kinding Pattern from my Hexie Handbook. The Hexie Handbook is a collection of 15 hexagon blocks and the quilts they make, plus The Hexie Harvest Quilt, a sampler quilt that includes all of them. Because these triangles had been made for Hexie Harvest, it made sense to choose another quilt from the e-book because the all hexagons are the same finished size. Kindling, a hexagon quilt of just 3" hexagons, fit best for the large florals I wanted to feature. I used this EPP kit in the shop, and added these triangle paper pieces to go between the hexagons.
My mum stitched up the quilt top, and then I basted and quilted it over the holiday season. I don't know if you can pick up from the photo above, but I rummaged through my perle cotton collection for any blues and purples. I used to buy a new perle cotton ball or 2 for most of my quilts, and now I have SO MANY perle scraps, I'm on a mission to use them all up! This quilt has 3 or 4 perle ball ends, an Aurifil 12wt wool I got as a sample years ago, and some embroidery thread. I'm having a GREAT time using up these random bits that have been sitting in a tin for years!
An education on Pink
In some of these photos, the colours look warm and soft and happy, and in others they look yellow and a bit clashy. The quilt is like that in real life too. And it was actually my experience of the Hexie Harvest Quilt I unpicked in the first place, so I think it's the pink. It's perhaps just not 'pink' enough? But it's also not coral? It's sits somewhere in the middle, and I think I'd like it more if it went one way or the other. Perhaps also, I was a bit too free and easy with my hard-to-use blacks and navies. I always get a bit excited when I find an excuse to use up prints that have been sitting abandoned in my stash for years! Some of these prints stick out to me as not quite right, like the matchstick-style navy, or the Rifle Paper Co black floral. Perhaps if I'd stuck with those Anna Maria Horner florals that are warm and rich, rather than some of the cooler prints, it would hold together better? What do you think?
A Hexagon Quilt for Learning
Recently I wrote about starting quilts with "Good Idea Energy" and this quilt definitely fits into that category. In that post I wrote about my goal being to not start so many quilts just because they were good ideas, but I'm actually really glad I made this one, even though it doesn't make it to my list of favourites. (If every quilt had to make it to said list, I would probably never start quilts in the first place!) I know what kinds of quilts I LOVE to make and own - rich, scrappy, colourful, with random colour placement. But there are also quilts that come from curiosity, from a challenge, from wanting to learn. This Kindling Quilt is one of those. "Can I use all those tricky large, dark florals from my stash? Can I make a quilt I love with these weird pink triangles?" The answer is almost. Then, looking at the quilt, trying to figure out why I only almost love it is just as fun as the making!
What to make your own? Grab what you need below!
This is beautiful! I love that you took something you didn’t quite like and reused it in different way. It’s absolutely gorgeous and I am definitely going to try this. Thank you for such a brilliant idea!
I love this. It can be a horrible experience when a quilt isn’t coming together as envisioned, reusing those triangles is just beautiful.
I loved reading this! When Ihad finished making my Hexie Harvest quilt I also wasn’t sure about the colour of my joining triangles. I found the pieces too small and cut the quilt up too much. My solution was to join with diamonds. I love your patterns, and have made quite a few. I am currently stitching the Good things are coming quilt.
Oh Jodi that’s where we’re very different. I’m gut led; you’re always analysing (overthinking is what I call it when I do it).
I recently finished sewing 3 quilt tops that I used blocks I made during May 2020 when I was shielding as a CEV (Clinically Extremely Vulnerable) person. I’d felt extremely isolated and trapped as CEV people were advised to stay at home and any outside time to happen within their private garden. My daughter used to drop off my weekly shopping and say a quick hello through my living room window.
I live in a 1 bedroom ground floor flat in a block of 8 with a shared garden.
I thought I’d breeze through this enforced alone time as it wouldn’t be that much different to my usual everyday (sewing, reading, a bit of housework). However it proved more difficult than I expected as the other thing in my usual everyday was spur of the moment walks in my neighbourhood.
By May I was stir crazy and I don’t remember if my stash of Monkey Wrench was from the previous autumn release or the spring’s release by Tula Pink but decided it was the best time to make Monkey Wrench blocks using my AccuQuilt Qubes in all the sizes I had, and my 2.5 inch strip dies to “frame” the 3 smaller sized blocks to bring them up to the size of largest block. Thinking about it I was able to buy extra of the banana print I used to make the strips but not of the rest of collection so I think it was the October release.
Anyhow I made 30 blocks 18.5 inch when trimmed (18 inches in the quilt) and they were put away until I decided to make this year a finish the WIPs challenge.
When I finally decided to make 3 quilt tops on a 3×3 grid I separated the blocks into the 4 Monkey Wrench block sizes and randomly put 9 blocks taking blocks from each pile. The only definite was the largest block was the middle block the other blocks were initially put randomly around that block not considering colour or anything.
I stepped back and being medically blind with my extreme blurry remaining sight rearranged/ balanced the colours by the strips then by the monkey wrench blocks.
Colour wise the quilt tops are fairly chaotic. But they are so much fun. And mostly balanced… ish!
I am in agreement with the Love-This Quilters who have commented before me! I don’t see the shifting nature of your pink triangles as a problem. It reminds me of the pink skies at sunrise shifting in hue as your eye moves across the quilt, and the blacks and navy blues are the receding shadows of night. But I definitely get that we all have our favorite color schemes and it can be a beautiful quilt that everyone else loves and it’s just not doing it for you, and that’s okay, too. Also, your discussion about the pink tickled a random dusty neuron at the back of my brain - Julia Roberts as Shelby in the movie Steel Magnolias: “Pink is my Signature Color.” :)
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