Hexagon Thoughts :: Week Five :: Hexagon Piecing 101 Video

For those visual learners (like me) out there, here's the Hexagon Piecing 101 video!

Please look past my dry hands and raspy, early morning voice. My allergies have been terrible this spring. 

Let me know if you find this kind of thing helpful. I love actually seeing something done in addition to reading instructions and looking at photos. If you do find it helpful and would like to see additional videos, please comment and let me know what you'd like to see.

I also wanted to add (again) that I use size 9 betweens hand quilting needles and 100% cotton hand quilting thread in light brown for piecing.

If you are making a hexagon project and would like to swap scraps with other fellow hexagon addicts, please visit the discussions at the flickr group. There are some great swap ideas being proposed and we'd love for you to join us!

I caved.

And life just got a little easier.

Spring to Finish 2010

It's so exciting to see the beginnings of so many beautiful hexagon quilts in the Hexagon Charm Quilt Piece-Along flickr group! There are also some fun swaps in the works, so if you are working on a charm quilt and need some additional fabrics, be sure to check out the discussions for details. I need to figure out the Mr. Linky thing so we can do a little roll-call for hexagon quilts and be sure we don't miss any fantastic projects! I'm putting that on my to-do list.

Not too many hexagons here this weekend. I was inspired by Jacquie's Spring to Finish challenge and I think it's just what I need to finish up some WIPs so they don't turn into UFOs.

Here's my list. I'm considering hand quilting the Pinwheel Sampler, so I'd be happy to just finish the quilt top by May 31st. The hexagon quilt isn't on this list. It will go on the 2011 Spring to Finish list. 

I did get a few more pinwheel blocks made. This is such a fun project! 

The project receiving the most attention this weekend was my Color Wheel quilt. I'm about half finished with the hand quilting. The more hand quilting I do, the more I love it.

I hope you had a productive weekend too. 

Hexagons Thoughts :: Week Four :: Quilting Hexagons

Have you thought about how you are going to quilt your hexagons? The first thought that comes to my mind is that I will probably want to hand quilt my hexagons because it almost seems a shame to machine quilt it after hand piecing. Below are a few hand quilting options I was thinking about.

One thought was to quilt around the inside edge of the flower clusters. You could also quilt inside the center hexagon of each flower if you needed additional stitching to secure your batting.

The most time consuming method, but my favorite, would be to quilt inside each hexagon. You could do multiple hexagons without tying off your thread by moving the thread from hexagon to another inside the quilt.

This one looks a little strange in the diagram, but I think it would be very interesting on a quilt. It feels a little modern to me.

This one looks peculiar in the diagram too, but I think it would actually work well. A major advantage of going with diagonal stitching is that you avoid the bulk in the corners of the hexagon by stitching only through the straight sides. 

Added on 4/27/10.  Kait had a great suggestion and I think this is close to what she described. Another great choice!

I know there are many more options for quilting patterns and I would love to hear your suggestions. What other interesting ways have you seen to quilt a hexagon quilt?  Do you have a vintage grandmother's flower garden quilt that has interesting quilting?