More on the hexies....a little tutorial

I put some photos of making my hexagons up on Flickr and got a question or two on using the plastic template.  


I  have used both the English paper-piecing method and  the plastic or mylar foundation piecIng.  I  bought  a ton of them back in the day and launched an ambitious Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top using them..the idea being that you could leave them in the hexies, sew them together to make one 18 hexie block,  press (mylar is heat resistant) then pop them all out.  Start again.  I liked it since there were no basting stitches to remove and no paper to take out. However, I ran out of patience and dumped the whole project some years back.


Then, when Heather  from A La Mode Fabric sends an email asking me to join the hexie group. I found about three or four of them left in my junk.  I wanted to make the pillow that Ashley made.  So I used just one of the plastic joberdoos as follows:  

Do a running stitch around the edge of the fabric. Pull the thread to gather and tie off.  Press using warm iron with a spritz of starch...allow to cool and then pop out the plastic.  Repeat.

Making these little guys is addictive...plus you can put fabric scraps, needle, thread scissors and your template in a zip-lock and drop it in your bag.  Portable hand work is a good thing!

Personally, I would never do it this way for a quilt.  But I wanted a whole bunch of  hexies to put on my pillow.  

Copying Ashley's pillow design, I made my own from scraps from a repro fabric quilt I made. I had an 18" pillow form, so cut a piece of Kona White 20" square, another of batting and two pieces about 20 by 12 for the envelope back. Spray basted the top to the batting and quilted using inspiration courtesy of CharminI 

have a Janome, and it comes with a blind-hem foot. I moved the needle posittion all the way to the left and sort of improvised a 1/8" foot. I sewed all the hexies down with 1/8" allowance all around.  

Made bias binding....put that on and added the backing and voila!  This was fun, fun, fun!


p.s.  I love the way the hexies are all organized in the upper right, then they start escaping and tumbling down.....the symbolism is not lost on me ;)


BTW, all the talented ladies whose work I admire and have mentioned here are listed in my blogroll..over in the right column.