Quilt Reveal – The Meander Hexie Quilt

You already know how much I love Heather Ross fabrics.

I have quite a bit.  I have quite a bit of oldies.  I only like to use smidgeons of it, because…..

Well, I like to look at it on top of the dresser that holds my stash.  It sits atop on a pedestal begging me to come pet it.

So I’ll pull it out and look at all the sweet little novelty prints.

I’ll admit that Rapunzel is my absolute favorite.  Her snarky face just owns me.

But I’m also really taken with all the storybook characters.  And the critters, and the snails, okay, all of it.  I love all of it.

I did something.

I cut into my stash of Heather Ross.  A lot of cutting happened.  It was painful.  Yet, beautiful.

Are you laughing at me yet?

I’ve never known what to do with it.  It’s too magical to use.  I can’t waste it on some lame project.  It has to be an epic quilt.  It has to be as nearly to perfect as my two lame hands can make.

Hexagons are my shape this year.

I’ve never mentioned that yet, but they are.  I’m on a mission to explore them.  To make all the quilts in different ways with them.

I’ve done the half hexies a bunch, and I think I actually have another of those coming up soon, but I want to do different things with hexies.

My list goes like this:

half hexies – check

applique hexies –

pieced whole hexagons –

EPP hexagons –

So this is kinda a massive project.

Today I’m showing you my applique hexagons and I can now go ahead and check that off my list as well.  Leaving me only two more ways of exploring for the year.

Are you freaking out about the black and white stripe?  I certainly was.  It was super scary, but all of my IG friends told me to do it, so I’m blaming them.

Also, I LOVE it!

So here is the story about this quilt.  I just started cutting them.  The hexagons.  Not sure what I’m doing.

Then I went on the search for inspiration and landed upon the Modern Hexie master herself, Nicole at Modern Handcraft.

I saw all the Modern Hexie quilts two years ago when they were uber popular, but I wasn’t into hexies then, I’m into hexies now.

So Nicole has the world’s best basting method for free here.

As soon as I landed on this page I knew it was exactly what I was going to do with my Heather Ross fabrics.

I was ridiculously slow, but that’s okay.  It wasn’t a project that I wanted to rush.  I could take my time, pet the fabrics, and enjoy the slowness.

It took me a few months to baste all of my hexagons.

So my hexagons are REALLY big.  But they had to be to get some of these fabrics fussy cut properly.

I really love how Nicole quilts her hexagons directly onto the fabric, but you know me.  I don’t have the patience for this much straight line quilting.

I want to swirl and twirl about.

So I decided that I would meander quilt all of over this thing.

You might be thinking, “Oh my, you could really mess these fabrics up!”

But then you have apparently underestimated my stash of these.  I have more.  So much more.

But seriously, I loved this idea.  And the thought of meandering all over these hexagons just seemed right to me, so I went for it.

The issue with this method of course is making sure that my hexagons don’t flip up after wash and wear.  Note, that they are not sewn onto my background until they are quilted, just like Nicole does hers.  And while straight line quilting will work well for this, free motion quilting –  not so much.  So I had to be careful, thoughtful and just be sure that my stitches did make it to every corner of my hexagons.

I did get it done, but I’m not going to tell you it was easy.  And there were places that I missed and had to go back and restitch down.

This was all balanced with the amount of negative space on the quilt, and in that area I was able to whip right on through that.

Even with the difficulties, I’d make this quilt again.

I enjoyed the new-ness of the process.

Enough of my gibbering, onto finished pics.

I cannot believe I didn’t get a picture of the back!  It’s super scrappy with Amy Butler prints and a bunny print from Wonderland by Riley Blake.

This quilt is available in my shop.

You can purchase this quilt here.

Please note that I don’t use my Heather Ross stash for custom orders, so if you want a quilt made with her older lines this would be one of the few times I have them available.

Fabrics

Hexagons are all Heather Ross fabrics.

Black and white stripe is by Riley Blake fabrics and is available here.

Binded with Tanya Whelan’s Rambling Rose in white.  I really like roses with stripes by the way.

Batting is from The Warm Company and is the Warm and Natural.

Quilt Details

(61) 6.5″ finished hexagons – basted by hand

Background stripe measures 72×84″ and was cut from two pieces of fabrics and thoughtfully pieced so you can’t tell (but just a smidgeon).

Finished quilt measures 72×84″.

All hexagons were glued to the background fabric prior to quilting, but after quilt was basted.  I used  Glue-Baste-It and was very impressed with the hold the glue had even when I was wrangling this quilt around trying to FMQ all over it.  But it was still temporary enough for me to pull them off when they got a little crooked when I first started using the glue on the hexagons.

Thanks for following along!  XO, Melanie

 

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