This week I totally branched out! I tend to stick to squares and triangles when quilting but I was gifted a hexagon ruler a while back and decided it was time to try it out. That ruler had remained tucked away in the back of my drawer because of how intimidating a hexagon quilt seemed to me. I'd never done one before nor did I a pattern. I was familiar with how to piece squares, triangles, and even circles but hadn't ventured towards the Y seam.
Thankfully I got over my trepidation because I love how this turned out! It's warm, inviting, and the white hexagons stick out in such an adorable way with the quilted flowers.
I started out my project with a single jelly roll of these vintage floral prints. I love the way these prints complement each other and how jelly rolls cut down on so much time. I took the jelly roll strips and sewed 3 together. From there I cut out half hexi's.
Then came the fun part: figuring out how I wanted to sew them together! Sometimes I start with a pattern and cut everything just so and know everything I need. Other times, I like to see where a project will take me. I played around with a lot of different options. I decided I needed something solid to break up all the prints and ended up with this design!
It's so cool how it almost looks 3D.
With my hexagons figured out, I just needed to add a little border flare. I sewed four leftover jelly roll strips on both short sides of the quilt.
To get through the Y seams, I marked a quarter inch away from each fabric edge. This helped them to pieced together really well!. While definitely more time consuming than straight-stitching, the effort was totally worth it.
After I had the top of the quilt pieced together, I spent a LONG time contemplating how I should quilt it. A lot of different ideas were floating around my head like stippling around all of the white hexagons or doing straight lines across the whole top.
Ultimately, I ended up asking my quilting community what they thought. They inspired my to pursue my first instincts: keep is simple around the white hexagons and do something more elaborate inside of them.
Before I tried the flowers on the quilt, I practiced a few times on scraps. I highly recommend this! You can even draw the shape that you will be quilting inside of on your scrap fabric to give you the proper borders to fill.
Even though it was blazing hot at about 97 degrees, I held my photo shoot outside. This is an aspect of quilting I have really come to enjoy. As I give my quilts away as gifts or sell them on my store, I often forget about things I've created. By having photo shoots I can document my projects and remember what I've done! It's also just plain fun to wander around and think of creative ways to photograph your quilts.
What's your favorite trick for quilting with hexagons??? Leave a comment below!
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