One of my friends brought this BEAUTY to share at our sewing group yesterday. What a treasure! It was given to her by her mother - can't remember who made it. I love the idea of surrounding each flower with white and then adding green paths. Even Fritz loves it! (This is his house and he enjoyed every minute of our get together!) I love the way the edges were finished: straight on two sides and zigzagged on the other two. I'll have to remember this! And here's a close up of the HAND quilting - yes, all by hand! The interesting this about this quilt is that it has no batting! It is in perfect condition - WOW! I put the last stitches in the April BOM last night. We're counting down now! Can't wait to share it in a few days...
You can create any number of shapes with this technique, but there's a reason that the humble hexagon is so popular - hexagons fit together...
With a ton of things to do before the end of the year I got distracted yet again! I saw the "Quilt as you go Hexagon" tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Co. (here) and realized that this was my kind of hexie! Paper piecing and little hexies scare me - but this bigger, faster and easy version seemed like a whole lot of fun. You don't have to buy a template; there are lots of tutorials and videos that show you the same technique using cardboard and different sized units. I did get the one sold by MSQC on their daily deal and am loving it. I got a "Scrap Pack" of fabric from Hawthorne Supply Co. in Amy Butler fabric to expand my own Amy stash. This may not be the traditional way to do this but here is my process. Cut your larger hexie and then with a pencil trace the image of where the batting and smaller hexie will go. Position your batting on your pencil lines and stick the batting down with the help of a little glue stick. Pin the smaller hexie onto the batting. Put a little glue on the bottom edge of the larger hexie. Make the first fold and press. Then dab a little more glue onto the hexie, fold and press with the iron. Apply glue and press one side at a time. The MSQC tutorial shows Jenny using "Magic Pins" - pins that have a silicone tip that can be ironed and not melt. I don't have those and figured applique glue would work, which it does just fine. Lastly, straight stitch around the unit and that's it. Will experiment in the final joining of all the hexies with a thicker #28 weight Aurifil thread using a zig zag so that stitching shows up even more. This is a long term project but it's easy to pick up for a quick sewing fix when one gets tired of bigger projects and you 'just want to sew something!' So, for good instructions and lots of ideas of what to make with these hexies - check out the MSQC video here. Materials: Quilt As You Go Hexagon Template from Missouri Star Quilt Co. Amy Butler everything :) Hawthorne Supply Co. Aurifil Thread #50 weight (#2024-white) Warm & White batting scraps Roxanne Glue Baste Glue & Collins Fabric Glue Stick December 2019
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October 2012. Blogged: www.raspberryrainbow.com/2013/03/my-pink-hexie-creative-s...
Brand new version - November 2023! The Hexie Handbook just got a comprehensive update! Now with optional added triangles between the blocks, hyperlinked contents page, and whole printable template sheets per shape! I'm pretty sure hexagons have magic powers. ;P Seriously though, designs that fit inside the hexagon, some older than ancient, some rarely seen before, some obvious, some surprising, are so happy and beautiful, it's no wonder they're seen from Roman frescos to modern kitchen splashbacks! The Hexie Handbook is a celebration of these designs. It includes a basic 3" hexagon quilt pattern as the base, then 14 extra 3" hexagon block designs to create entire new quilts. Finally the Hexie Harvest Sampler Quilt is the perfect way to try each block. That's 16 quilt patterns for the price of 2! What you get: Downloadable PDF delivered by email link. Set in US letter format for easy printing. Hyperlinked contents page to make it easy to find your favourite pattern. Glossary of the various shapes in the Hexagon Shape Family and how they tile together. How to adjust the designs by making the blocks bigger or the quilts bigger. Fabric cutting guide for quick strip cutting. Easy fabric calculation guide if you want to use a single background colour for one of the shapes (which can be used in ANY EPP quilt.) Clear diagrams, instructions, and a colouring sheet for each block/quilt. Instructions for optional triangle settings between blocks. Printable templates - 1 whole sheet of templates per page for efficient printing. The Hexie Handbook is the perfect introduction to the world of hexagons. Buy it now and immerse yourself in the world's oldest patterns. Photo of labelled blocks by Karen @piecesofcontentment. Photos with timber background by Lucy Bath.
Quite a few months back I was searching for vintage feed sacks on ebay and came across these wonderful pot holders. The photo on ebay was not great but I thought what the heck..... I was so pleased when I received them and couldn't wait to make my own version!! I made these for my mom's birthday...... I finished the hand stitching on this one while watching PBS lastnight. This one was started lastnight and I think it is my favorite. I love the yellow, brown and red combo! The center print is a reproduction of a vintage feed sack. The teapot and two brown prints came from vintage feedsack and the yellow prints are from the soon to be realeased Moda line Glamping. Have a lovely day! xo Charise
pretty little things :: everyday
Allison made this top . Didn't get it finished in time to enter the Marcus fabrics Just Judie contest... A masterpiece for sure. She used 1/2" hexagon papers!
Hello and welcome to another Hexie Linky Party (HeLP) for Hexie-aholics!!! Today I'm sharing progress on my Value Proposition project!! I'm prepping this post on Friday - by the end of lunch I'll be able to finish sewing these two together. At some point this weekend I'll be able to attach this pair to the mothership, which will look like this: If you're just dying to see what the whole quilt will look like...here you go!! Incredibly out of focus but I didn't realize until I had picked them all up. Sorry! Laying it out like that shows me I have a loooooooong way to go but I have another one day conference this weekend which should get me well on my way with the inner sashing on another rosette. I'll take any progress I can :-) And now it's your turn! What are you working on?? We want to see your current projects, UFOs or dream projects. It can be hexies, kites, thirds, diamonds, whatever shape you want - we don't care - we just want to see it. LOL!! Thanks for linking up and Have a Hexie Day! An InLinkz Link-up
I began making three-quarter-inch hexies for a traditional Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt on March 6, 2012. In the following 15 months, approximately 910 hours of work later, I have nearly completed the top!!!! Here I am holding up the top, peeking through the last few feet of the last seam still to be sewn. Holding it as I whip stitch along each 3/4" seam, joining hexie to hexie, takes a tremendous amount of finger strength because of the weight of the rest of the quilt pulling it out of my grasp. The weight is more than you'd imagine because the paper pieces are still in each of the hexies. When I finish this seam, the next step is to iron the top, and possibly spray starch it. Then I'll remove the basting stitches and the paper pieces. Does anybody have any thoughts about the spray starch? Is it a good idea? Is there a brand or type you've used successfully? Then I have to find a place where I can lay out the back, the batting, and the top on a large floor space or tables. I plan to baste the layers together rather than pin because I think know it will take me a L-O-N-G time to quilt and the pins might leave permanent holes in the fabrics. Yes, I'm going to hand quilt it. I've made a faithful reproduction quilt so far and want to keep it that way if possible. Yes, it will be hugely challenging and character building. Oh well... Just in case you're interested... here are the steps and the approximate time to complete each of them. There are 4,428 hexagon-shaped pieces (hexies) in this quilt top. The size of each hexagon is 3/4" measured along one edge. I used approximately 330 different prints and solids, all of them reproductions of 1930s fabrics. To wash and iron these fabrics, plus cut and baste 4,428 hexies took approximately 270 hours. That's almost 7 solid work weeks just to get the hexies ready to stitch together! The most fun part was making the flowers, choosing a solid color for the center, and stitching the hexie petals around the center. There are 238 flowers in the quilt. Each flower is a different fabric, although I only used about 20 different colors for the centers. I estimate it took me about 100 hours to stitch the flowers. I'd do this step again in a heart beat, because they are small enough to be easy to handle, relatively quick to sew, and ever so pleasing, each different, each precious in its own way. The next step was a little more boring... sewing the plain white pathway hexies around 130 of the flowers, which added another 130 hours of hand stitching. I didn't count the hours it took me to layout all the flowers in a pleasing arrangement and decide which green hexies I would match to which flowers (to suggest leaves) in alternate rows. I'm going to guess about 10 hours, maybe more, because I did it in several stages. The picture above shows the last stage of the layout process, after I'd already stitched many of the flowers together in sections of about 12 flowers. Making the flowers and stitching the white borders around them is easy lap work. Sewing them together starts to get difficult. I wrote the row number and column letter on the back of each flower after laying them out, so I could keep them in the right order as I sewed them together. I first made large sections, like the one pictured above, about 4 rows deep and 4 to 6 flowers across. At this point, I decided to add a double border around the whole quilt. Working with the outside sections, I added the border hexies. Then I sewed the sections into larger sections that went all the way across the quilt, still 4 rows deep.There were 7 units spanning the width of the quilt top. The last step was to sew these 7 units together. The picture at the top of this post shows me holding up the quilt with just under half of the last seam yet to sew. This process got more and more difficult as the pieces got larger... It's difficult to hold (very tired fingers, can't sew more than 1 or 2 hours at a time), heavy, takes up a lot of space (no longer a simple lap job... plan on the whole sofa). Time for joining the flowers together to complete the quilt top? It took about 400 hours. The finished size (before quilting) is 71" x 93", which is a nice blanket size for a single bed, or big enough to use as a topper for a full or queen bed. Total time to hand-sew this quilt top was approximately 910 hours, which is equivalent to 22.75 work weeks, or nearly 6 months on the job. Why do we do this? Why spend so many hours hand sewing one quilt? I don't know if I would have accepted the job if I had realized how many hours it would take. However, it has been engaging most of the time. Plus, I am able to watch movies or programs on TV while I'm sewing, and many of the hours were spent in the enjoyable company of my quilting buddies. (Some of them are also working on hexie quilts.) All in all, I'd give it close to 5 out of 5 stars as jobs go. I'm a tad worried about hand quilting it. I hope it's manageable, that my hands will hold up to the effort of it, and that I don't get too bored. I'll keep a time sheet on it and report back after a while. Oh, and by the way, now you understand why I haven't been blogging much during the past year and a half. It also explains why I haven't finished my Bead Journal Projects for 2012 or 2013. That's the real drawback to making a quilt like this, the one regret I have about it.
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After hand sewing 1078 hexies to make 154 hexagon flowers I decided to start stitching them together. 3/4" hexies, each flower uses two different fabrics (no duplicates in quilt). I'll have to sew more hexies to make a nice sized lap quilt, but at least now it is looking like a quilt and not just a jar of flowers.
Hexagons - everyone's favourite! They are beautiful made into flowers or diamonds or stars or just plain scrappy! Hexagons are measured along one side, and all the sides are equal. The width of a hexagon is twice its side length. The 2" hexagon template is made from 3mm acrylic, and includes a 3/8" seam allowance and fabric marking holes. It pairs beautifully with a Big Box of 2" Hexies found here. Perfect for my free Secret Garden Hexie Quilt Pattern, or my free Midnight Feast Pattern.
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