Saturday, August 21, 2010

Scrappy Hexagon topper

Well, here is my third practice piece doing hexagons. These batiks are mostly from a $5 bag of batik scraps that I bought at our local quilt shop. I still have lots of smaller scraps left to do another smaller project that I have in mind.

For this runner, I used a slightly different method of cutting the triangles, and it made piecing them a little different. My previous runners, I nubbed off the corners of the triangles, just like Marti Michel suggests with her template set. This topper uses un-nubbed triangles. I used a skinny pink border (left over fabric from last weeks hexagon) and I've just laid out the dark blue binding to see if I like it. And I do like the contrast. Of course, I'll only apply the binding after it's quilted.

I tried to get a little creative and used some blue triangles to see if I could make some hidden stars, but they look more like large flowers. Squint your eyes, to see what I mean. Even though it's not the look I was after, I think I'll still enjoy using it.

So, I've done all this hexagon prototype work in preparation to make a fun "I spy" quilt for Aurora later in the fall. We had our local "I spy charm swap" earlier this week, I now have my kit of 120 charms.

After doing a few things on my to-do list, I'll start fussy cutting each hexagon one by one from the charms. I'll enjoy that.


One cutting tip I will share with you is this. I recently bought this mini-cutting mat that is 7" x 10" big. It's so small you wouldn't think it would have any value at all. But when I started cutting my hexagons for my practice pieces, I found that this little cutting mat was a great tool. Rather than lift the acrylic template, you just swing the mat around when it's time to make each of your cuts.


I'm registered to take a "Hexagon I spy" class locally in the fall, so I won't start sewing until the class. I will enjoy the cutting for now.

1 comment:

Donna's chitchat said...

So Adorable. I can't wait to see Aurora's I Spy. Please, no beehives!