Sunday, August 7, 2016

floating half-hexagon quilt, my take

Remember this quilt top?
I finally finished it!  This idea for a quilt came from the Missouri Star Quilt You-Tube Channel.  I'm always looking for ideas to use my closet/dressers full of fabric.

The finished block measures 5.75” x 4", sashing strips are 1.5" and cornerstones are 1.5 square.  The quilt is my usual 48" x 72" afghan/lap quilt/toddler bed quilt. I made 72 blocks, 8 across, and 9 down.  I could have made the quilt 10 down but I decided I wanted more border.  So, I eliminated one row, split the top and bottom borders with a half-inch wide strip of color in the middle.

I didn't have a half-hexagon ruler to cut the hexi block pieces with.  I dug through some quilting templates from Mother's stash, marked one with some tape and used it.
I didn't use 5" charm packs but scrapes from another projects.  It takes two, 2 1/2" x 9" strips to make a block. After you cut the background fabric into half-hexies; then cut the half-hexies in half (quarter-hexies?).  Sew the background pieces to the colored prints and then sew the two halves together.
I choose to stitch in the ditch and then triangles in the centers of the hexagons. The extra quilting was two-fold.  I thought it would look good and I used scrap batting.  When you use scraps of batting you, want the quilting closer together so the edges don't shift as you wash it.  I used straight line quilting about 3/4" apart for the borders.
One of the reasons this quilt took so long to finish was because I couldn't decide what I wanted to use for the backing.  I dug around in the fabric stable (It's too big to be a stash!) and found a huge piece of blue seersucker I forgot I had.  After washing the quilt, this seersucker is as soft as flannel against your skin.  I am going to keep that in mind when doing baby quilts.
I used what I had of that shade of yellow for the binding and had just barely enough.  Yeah!
Well the label is on, so it is time to hit the publish button!

I hope everyone is having a good day.

Judy

2 comments:

Shadowmoss said...

Looks good. I never had the patience to do quilting. I stick with knitting and crochet, and don't do much of that.

Judy said...

My first sewing projects were 9-patch quilt blocks. There is nothing easier than sewing squares of fabric together. I find most quilt tops don't take long to design and make. It's the long slog of the actual quilting that gets to me.

Knitting, crocheting, building stuff...all appeal to me. Just not enough hours in the day or money in the bank. ;>)

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