Free English Paper Piecing Hexie Banner Pattern

Oh friend, can I just say how chuffed I am with this cute hexie banner?! I started it about a week ago, inspired by my newsletter crew to make something quick and not-a-quilt to share, so that you could dip your toes in the English paper piecing ocean before committing to whole-quilt dive. I spent a delicious day basting too many hexies and then playing with layouts, and then, as usual, the doubts started to creep in. How was this going to look? How would I finish it? How long would it take? The doubting stage of a project is not very fun, and I'm the last person to spout truisms about it always working out in the end. Sometimes it doesn't. But that's why the successes are SO SWEET! I made a hexie banner with an easy finish that I could describe in an English paper piecing pattern, and I just love it!

The stitching EPP hexies were quick and easy, coming together in about a day, with stops for setting up the camera and stopping for coffee. But the finishing part loomed. The uncertainty of it. I left it for a day to mull over, and the next morning, when I faced it, none-the-clearer for how I was going to put it all together, I just started with the bits I knew and went from there.  It was a joy to discover that I could easily figure out with my hands what I couldn't in my head. I just needed to hold it! To press and trim and keep going from there. As soon as I was actually doing it, it didn't feel hard or silly at all. 

I decided not to add wadding and quilting to the project because I didn't want the extra fuss and thickness making a loop for the dowel at the end. I was really glad for this decision. I just added some extra fabric to the top of the panel to become the loop, backed it with scrap white fabric (I used white because I didn't want a darker fabric showing through the white hexagons), pressed and top-stitched it. No fussy binding or hand-sewn sleeves. Just exactly the level of fuss (or lack thereof) when you're ready to finish your sweet project and hang it on the wall!

And then, because we had a house full of colds, even the garden generously bent to my will, with a birch twig waiting on the ground for me when I went outside to see if I could skip a trip to the hardware store for dowel. Hurray!  The free English paper piecing Hexie Banner pattern includes colour photos, basic EPP instructions, a colouring sheet (I wanna see what other ideas you come up with!) and printable templates.