Hexie #5

Last year I blogged here, here and here about making a few hexagon blocks for the Mosaic Magic quilt shown on the Great Hexagon Quilt Along. If you'd like to see the original quilt, you can find it by taking a look at the posts above.

These are diamond-shaped blocks, and I am handpiecing them using the Inklingo software to generate the shapes. I love this method of printing the shapes right onto the fabric. When they come out of the printer, they're ready to cut and sew. I like handpiecing, but it is a slow enough process for me, and Inklingo lets me get to the fun stuff a lot faster.

The colors I'm using in the quilt are as close to the original colors as I can distinguish from the photograph, and they include tans, browns, creams, pink, red, and blue. I'm using mostly civil war prints, but I may throw in other fabrics if they appeal to me and suit my purpose.

There are 82 blocks in the quilt plus another 16 or so half blocks. I'm not in a hurry to get the quilt finished, and I won't work on it to the exclusion of everything else. So one of my goals for 2010 is to handpiece one hexagon block a week. I think that's doable for me; and if I can piece an extra one here and there, I expect I'll have about 60 by the end of the year.

I love looking at the backs of these blocks after they're pressed. I find those little hexagons at the intersections just fascinating.

A Few Hexagon Blocks

When Robyn started The Great Hexagon Quilt-Along blog, I thought it sounded like fun and I joined. The inspiration for the blog is a quilt constructed entirely of diamond-shaped hexagon blocks. I tried English paper-piecing years ago and enjoyed it, even though I thought it a very slow method. By the time Robyn started her blog, Linda Franz had already published several of the Inklingo collections, so I decided the time was right to give it another try. I made one block, then the project fell by the wayside.

This week I decided it was time to get it back on track, so I collected a few more fabrics for it and started washing, pressing and cutting. I'm using primarily civil war fabrics for the quilt, plus scraps of whatever else appeals to me; and I plan to stick to the colors used in the original quilt--red, pink, blue, brown, tan, and cream--but probably in different proportions.

I'm using the Inklingo software to print hexagons right to the fabric, so there's not much preparation. I'm sure the ability to pretty much get right to the sewing will hold my interest longer. I'm trying not to think about the fact that I'll need 82 diamond blocks to complete the quilt as it was originally shown, and I'll just keep plugging away at it.

Since I've just gotten started with this project again, I've made one additional hexagon and nearly finished a second. Handpiecing 25 hexagons together into a block takes me a long time, but I'm really enjoying it. I love looking at the backs of these blocks--all those little hexagons formed by pressing the seams just look so cool.

Sunday Stash Report

The Sunday Stash Report is completely uninteresting today--nothing in and nothing out. Oh, wait, today is Monday, isn't it? No matter. I worked most of the week; but lest you think I was idle in the sewing room, I did finish the last Star BOM block, made a diamond hexagon block for the Great Hexagon Quilt Along, and knitted a little on my socks.

This past Friday was the first Casey's Quilters meeting of the new year. The planned project was these tissue box covers. I think maybe 9 or 10 ladies made them, but a couple ladies left early, so this was what was left. Everyone seemed to have a different brand of tissue, and every box was sized slightly differently, so each pattern had to be tweaked a little for a snug fit. Why don't they make these all the same size?

I decided not to make a tissue box cover and worked on this diamond hexagon block instead. Each hexagon finishes to one inch on each side, so roughly the block finishes to about 13-1/2" x 8.5". I think at this size I'd have to make 100 or more blocks to make a queen-sized quilt (gasp!). For a queen-sized quilt, a larger hexagon may be more appropriate, so I'm going to try a bigger hexagon that will finish to either 1-1/4" or 1-1/2" on each side. With a larger hexagon I may be able to machine piece at least some of them when I'm home. Either way it will take a month of Sundays to get them all done.

I handpieced this first block using the Inklingo software. With Inklingo you can print the hexagons, complete with cutting lines, stitching lines, and alignment marks, directly to fabric, thereby eliminating most of the prep work associated with English paper piecing. It's so much faster, and I can get right to the fun part--the stitching. Several different collections of shapes are available in the Inklingo format, and I can see myself wanting to try some other projects. Linda Franz, who conceived the idea of printing shapes directly to fabric, just released a new Apple Core collection. Imagine how easy it would be to print apple cores right to fabric instead of having to prepare templates and trace around each one! In my sidebar, the link for Inklingo takes you a page for hexagon quilters, but if you click here you can watch a free video explaining the concept.

BarbD had this quilt for Show and Tell. Isn't it beautiful? It's from the book Calming The Storm by Darlene Zimmerman and Joy Hoffman. What interested me about this quilt is that it uses the Tri-Recs rulers, which I bought last year for a project. The book shows some different ways to use these rulers, so I'll get more use from them.