Hexagons

After seeing my friend Mary (of Molly Flanders blog) at Sew to Speak work on her hexagons quilt I got an itching to try it out myself. I knew I always wanted to do hence the boxes of scraps that I keep from every project but I was letting myself get sidetracked because I couldn't find a solid small hexagon template.  I was just being bogus, because when I finally went to do it I found I never needed it in the first place and it would of made me waste a lot more time an energy then I needed to work with a foundation template from plastic or wood.  I said to myself I bet I can find a good hexagon size just from clip art on the internets.  So I did just that and printed out my hexagon to the size I wanted then I folded the paper over several times so I could cut out more then one at a time. Then I had my tiny hexagon templates, easy peezy like.  I continued to do the trace and fold trick using maker paper which is a bit more expensive but I like the weight of the paper and it is more durable then tracing paper.

My hexagon paper templates

Since this was my first go I picked the most boring scraps of fabric to try my hand at this.  I pin the hexagon to the fabric and cut around it leaving 3/8 - 1/4 of fabric around the template.

 After it is cut our all the way I begin the next step which is folding over the extra fabric around the paper template while baste stitching it down.

 You sew through the fabric, paper and out through the fabric again.

You want to pay careful attention to the corner when doing this so that you go through both the fabric to keep the corners sharp and flat.

After you basting do not tie it off or too tightly where it curls inwards.  You want to be able to pull the basting stitch out later without too much trouble.  At this point if I am home I would take a pile of them and press them flat to keep everything nice and crisp.

 After I assembled a small handful of them I started to piece them together by hand with a whip stitch and they fit together perfectly like a little puzzle.

Right now I have no idea what I am making, I just the lines to be at random and then I'll probably applique it onto something else.  When I am done with stitching all my pieces together I will press it with the iron again and then snip the basting stitches to pull them out.

I am very excited for this new piecing technique to play with.  I think it will add a good element of pattern to my designs and help me to further explore representing neurons into a fiber based art form.