It Finally Got Quilted!!!!

If you have been following along for the past few years you know that I love working with hexagons. My very first hexie project I started back in the spring of 2009, it was the traditional Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt using 1" hexagons. It took 5 long years to hand piece the queen size quilt top. Then it sat, and sat, and sat some more... waiting for me to quilt it. OK just to shed some light on why it has sat so long to be quilted, well... if truth be told after it took so long to piece it I couldn't stand to look at it any longer. Yup I was so mentally DONE with that quilt, LOL. Finally I decided it sat long enough and I just needed to push myself to quilt it, so it could be bound and be out of sight...period :)

 Here is the whole quilt finally quilted...it took 8 hours to quilt!

 

 I used a pantograph called "Jessie's Swirls" and scaled it down so that the quilting was pretty dense.

  

Here is the close up of the quilting. Now that the quilt is FINALLY done! I actually like how it turned out. Will I do another grandmother's flower garden quilt? Not on your life! But will I be doing more hexie quilts? Of course, in fact the 1/2" hexie quilt I started last year (or maybe a little bit before that) is half way done.
 

 

 This is just a couple of the blocks for the 1/2" scrappy hexies, I have 22 of them done out of 36 that I want to have for the quilt. Just looking at them makes me smile...love all the color!

 

  

But a quilt this size requires A LOT of little hexies. Here's a pic of me cutting some more from my stash using the accuquilt go. When it is finished I will let you know how many hexies it took to make this quilt...here's a little hint; thousands!

 

Hexie Fever!

4 years ago I started my 1st English Paper Piecing Quilt project. I chose to work with 1" hexagons. Even though I chose the common grandmothers flower garden layout design...I decided to do a large quilt, a king sized bed quilt. When I started it I had no idea what I was doing or how long it was going to take me. At the time I wanted a hand quilt project to do while I recuperated in bed after my surgery. Along my journey I have learned so much and since I started it over 4 years ago. There also seems to be "Hexie Fever" everywhere in the quilt blogging world this year.

 

When I first started there wasn't a lot of info out on the web. I came across a tutorial video over at www.brandysquiltpatterns.com she sells Mylar template hexagon shapes as well as other EPP shapes. She also sold the acrylic window template with a 1/4" seam allowance in order to cut out the Hexie shapes on fabric. When I started I followed her directions. But it seams like my 1/4" seam allowance was getting eaten away by wrapping it around the Mylar template. So I found a website (which the link is in my side bar of this blog) that would generate any size Hexie I needed. Then I printed it off on card stock and painstakingly cut around each little Hexie with my scissors (I made my card stock templates a scant smaller than 1" so I would have more seam allowance using the acrylic window fabric template. This worked ok until you have to start cutting out THOUSANDS of hexies. Also I found that because of hand cutting them out my template shapes were off a little here a little there. So my search continued to find what worked best for me.....

I came across vendors on Etsy, Ebay and the web that sold precut hexagon papers (which I did not want to use-not enough stability for my liking). Some even sold the precut hexies in cardstock! Then I found an  acrylic hexie template that includes a 3/8" seam allowance from www.paperpieces.com  Life was getting easier in the EPP world :0)   

However if you have worked with paper templates or even the cardstock templates they tend to fall apart after using them a few times. I wanted something that would last longer (like the Mylar templates without the hefty price tag for what I had in mind for my quilt studio.

Then this past month I was watching one of Bonnie Hunter's Quilt Cam episodes on her blog and a follower posted her about her hexie quilt she was making. She said she recently found a Hexagon Squeeze Paper Punch made by Fiskars! Boy did my ears perked up...I wanted to know more about this punch, what sizes did it come in, where could I buy one, did it cut template/Mylar plastic or just paper and cardstock? I did a search and found some on Ebay. One vender showed the size of the punched hexie on a 1/4" grid so I knew before buying that the XL hexagon squeeze punch by Fiskars was in deed for the 1" hexies that I use!!!! they also have 2 smaller sizes the Large which produces 3/4" hexies and the Medium which produces 1/2" hexies. Ok so cutting templates that will last in the my size just got easier!!   

A couple of years ago Accuquilt Go came out with a hexagon die in 3 sizes on it (2", 3", 5") these where the size across the widest part of the hexie (and not the side as most hexies are measured by). So with a little playing around I was able to figure out what size hexie template would work best for me (remember I like a generous seam allowance of 3/8"). So the smallest hexie shape that I have labeled 2 in the above pic works best for me using a 5/8" hexie template (1/2" hexie too small while the 3/4" hexie was too big for it). The middle one labeled 3 works perfect for my 1" hexie templates. And finally the last one labeled 5 works best with 2" hexie templates. Yup, I am a happier girl now that cutting templates are easier, cheaper, and faster but also cutting the hexie fabric shapes are easier as well!!!!   

Ok, so if you ever started a EPP and in my case a hexie project to be specific; you would know that it is very addictive. Here I am at the end of my hexie project (from 4 years ago) and what I learned is the following....

1) I love to hand piece

2) I love working with the 1" hexie shape

3) I also love using Bonnie Hunter's scrap user system (do you know where this is heading?, lol)

I started taking my batik scraps/crumbs/squares and turning them into 1" basted hexies....but where to store them? In the above pic I had 3 window tins that I saved from a few Christmas' back which had some bath & body works stuff in them. I figured I could store 4 rows of 1" hexies in each. Allowing me to have 1 row for each color I keep in my stash storage. I started out as a good idea....but hey did I tell you that "I REALLY LIKE THE 1" HEXIES?"  

So it wasn't long before I realized that if this was going to be a permanent part of my scrape user system I needed to come up with a better way of storing them. Yup! Hexie storage drawers! One for each of the 12 colors that I separate my stash in. They fit perfectly under the drawers I store my 1 1/2" strips in.    

 

Here's a top view peeking into my pink hexie drawer. Many shades of pink and all from batik scraps. So far they are only batiks in these drawers but I may add other pink fabrics in as well as time goes by depending on my scrap sizes.