It’s no secret that English Paper Piecing and Slow Stitching bring me incredible joy. I make no effort to hind the fact that participating in slow hand stitching, calms my mind, soothes my soul and benefits my mental health.
One of my absolute favourite things to make in EPP are hexies flowers. If I’m between projects, I make flowers. If I need a break from working on a particular project, I make flowers. If I don’t know what project to work on, I make flowers. If I’m feeling a little down in the dumps, frustrated or stressed, I make flowers. It’s safe to say that hexie flowers are always there when I need them.
I love them. They make me very happy.
The Happy Love Quilt is a little ode for my love of hexie flowers.
The beginning of this quilt design started with a selection of solid linen fabrics I had from The Strawberry Thief. I decide to take four colours, pink, red, soft blue and yellow, and turn them into single colour hexie flowers with a contrasting center using ¾” hexagons. I made 16 flowers in total, four of each colour.
But my hexie flowers needed a companion.
I had some ¾” basted jewels left over from another project. I love making little heart blocks with jewels. I started to arrange them in a different way than I had before around the outside of hexie flowers. I loved how they seemed to create an outer ring of pretty heart petals.
I decided to raid my stash for low value, pretty fabrics that would complement my solid colour hexie flowers. Now I had my sixteen flowers finished and they just looked so happy!
I had recently been admiring some of Jodi of Tales of Cloth pattern designs where she appliqued a single EPP block or motif on to solid fabric, such as her pattern Wild Sage Quilt. I decided I wanted to do the same thing so that my pretty flower blocks would stand out and be the main thing on show. Looking at my chosen colour palette for the flowers I got retro kitchen vibes and so I chose a lovely solid dark teal green fabric to use as the background. I think my flowers really pop against this colour. For my backing fabric I chose a fun yellow gingham print. I sourced both the background and backing fabrics from Scribbly Gum Quilt Co.
For the construction of the quilt, I slip stitch appliqued the flower blocks onto squares of the solid fabric using my favourite Bottom Line Thread. I then machine sewed the blocks together.
For the quilting I chose two methods. I machine quilted in the ditch along the sewn block seams, colour matching my thread to the fabric, and then I had appliqued around the hexagon flowers in a DMC Perle 8 thread. I colour matched my perle thread to the hexagons, then did contrasting stitching. Lastly I hand stitched in DMC Perle 12 white thread around the outside of the appliqued flower block.
I’m so pleased with how this quilt turned out. The process of making the rosettes brought me such happiness that for once it was easy to think of a name for the design, thus she was dubbed the Happy Love Quilt.
About the Pattern
The quilt consists of sixteen English Paper Pieced flower blocks appliqued on to background fabric. The flower blocks are created using hexagons and jewels in ¾” size.
This is a wonderful project for raiding your stash or using a specific collection of fabrics. You could make it completely scrappy by mixing up your fabrics for the blocks, or more concise by only choosing 3 or two fabrics for each block. You can also change the look of the quilt by using different fabrics for the block backgrounds, or keep to one solid colour as I have done.
The Happy Love Quilt pattern is written for intermediate to experienced quilt makers and EPPers. Knowledge of how to do English Paper Piecing and quilt construction is required to be able to make this quilt.
Included in the pattern:
Supplies list
Planning & Cutting shapes
Diagrams for piecing the blocks and the quilt together
Applique instructions
Quilting instructions
Colouring page for planning
The quilt uses the following shapes:
3/4” Jewels (Quantity 192)
3/4” Hexagons (Quantity 112)
Finished Quilt Size: 36” x 36”
Pattern & Kit Options (please note pattern and paper templates sold separately)
PDF Pattern with Printable Paper Templates
Printed A5 Colour Pattern Booklet
Pre-cut Paper Template Kit
The Happy Love Quilt was a delight to slowly stitch away on. It would be the perfect gift to make for the young, the old, or yourself. I’m sure that the endearing feelings the quilt is named for will be felt by both the maker and the receiver.
If you make your own Happy Love Quilt, please do share it with me by tagging @the_makers_stash on Instagram and by using #happylovequiltpattern.
I have made a little Making Of video for the Happy Love Quilt which you can watch over on my YouTube channel. Coming Soon
Happy Stitching
Miss Leela x
You can find the Happy Love Quilt Pattern and Kit in these places:
