Scrappy Hexie Quilt - Part 1

Hello lovely friends!I thought I'd check in today and show you a long term project I've begun...I'm calling it my Scrappy Hexie quilt, and as you can see it's made from hexagons.

These are 1 inch hexies, and are sooo fun to make and fussy cut. If you're new to this style of quilting, this is actually a really OLD craft called 'english paper piecing', where you tack or glue the fabric around a paper template, then sew them together by hand. At the end you remove all the paper, and baste and quilt the top as you would a regular quilt. It's not a quick project at all, but the results are worth it!I decided recently that my stash was just growing out of control, and as I still spend a large amount of time sitting through lessons while my kids are learning piano, and I have chilling time on the couch at night, this was the perfect project to chip away at.So this one is going to be a BIG quilt!

I'm aiming for at least a 60 inch wide quilt, and longer than that in the length. I've been assembling this first part in sections about this size, and then sewing them to each other. My favourite thread is Superior Bottom Line thread, which is very fine and very strong. I love how my stitches just disappear! I'm also flat back stitching these, so all the stitching is on the back, and you can hardly see any stitches from the front. Interestingly though, the amount the stitches disappear depends on the type of fabric. As I'm using a whole range of different cottons, from Liberty lawn, through to regular quilting cottons from all different manufacturers, they all behave quite differently.I'm going through my scrap bins, and using some of those fussy cutting remains which don't quite fit anything else, hence why some of the pictures are a bit off centre. But it's so satisfying to use them up! There's bits of Liberty, Yuwa, and plenty of kids and animals just being cute! This is a very busy scrappy look, and I'm not worrying too much about fabric or colour placement.

I'm just really enjoying the feeling of achievement slow stitching that this is giving me, and the knowledge that in this fast paced world, one day I hope to have pieced an entire quilt by hand for my posterity!Now I need to go and punch another few hundred more hexies and get gluing a heap more!And just to show you that this craft can make all kinds of things, here's a squishy ball, made from english paper pieced pentagons! Such a fun toy for a baby!

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