At the beginning of the month I made the decision to join the cool craft kids and participate in the Hexy MF Quit-a-long.  I ordered my papers, templates and supplies from a couple of different online stores and then set about waiting for them to turn up.

I’ve never been really good at waiting and so after a couple of days it got the better of me and I decided that I would start on the fabric selection and get cutting.  Because we’re now a one income family I decided that I would make as much of this quilt from the fabric in my stash as possible.  That’s not as hard as it sounds because I’ve been hording fabrics for a couple of years now.  You know, for that rainy day.  If you’ve been in Canberra lately you know it’s been raining…

…picking fabrics from the stash…

So I hit my stash with a plan.  There’s 74 large hexagon flowers for the quilt and my goal is to have 74 individual fabrics for petals.  I was pleasantly (and a little shocked) to find that I had enough fabric in the stash to do this.  I decided to remain somewhat mainstream when it comes to the flower centers and so I went with oranges and yellows for the center hexagons.  I obviously didn’t have 74 yellow/orange fabrics so there will be repetition in the center hexagons, but they’ll be uneven because I had more of some fabric then others.

…flower centers…

Once I had the fabrics sorted I had to cut them into 4 inch squares.  The hexy goddess Michelle had shared the secret to her hexy cutting; a lazy susan cutting mat.  I didn’t have the money to splurge on a purpose built cutting mat so I put HUBBY to work and had him convert our Ikea lazy susan and an old cutting mat into something I could use.  I was so impressed with his mad hack skills.  It worked a treat and made cutting out the 500+ squares so much easier.

…Ikea hack lazy susan cutting mat…

…4 inch squares cut…

With the squares cut I just had to wait for my hexagon template to turn up.  I was expecting it to take a good couple of weeks to arrive as it was coming from the UK but it turned up within the week.  Brilliant!  I was so happy because I’m so impatient and it meant that I could keep going with the momentum I had up from cutting all the squares.  (I must remind you at this point that I have a newborn in the house so all this fabric cutting happened in between nappy changes, feeding, settling, playing, laundry and napping.)

I had the template so there was no stopping me now, I set about cutting out all the hexagons.  I had grouped the fabrics together by primary fabric colour in an attempt to see what kind of pattern I might have when the flowers were made.  I don’t know why I did that because really I have no idea how it will all come together, but it appealed to my OCD nature to group them.

…white petal hexagons cut…

…center hexagons cut…

…pink petal hexagons cut…

…dark blue petal hexagons cut…

…red petal hexagons cut…

…green hexagons cut…

…light blue petal hexagons cut…

…brown petal hexagons cut…

…black petal hexagons cut…

For a girl who doesn’t like pink I was amazed to see how much pink I had in my stash.  By far pink will be the main colour on this quilt, which will be surprising to see how it will all come together. As I cut the hexagons I attempted to not fussy cut them but just let them be random selections of the patterns.  I want to just let the fabrics determine how the hexagons will look.  Although I think if I do another hexagon project I might just fussy cut then to see what happens.

…all the hexagons cut and waiting for basting…

So with all of that my hexagons are cut and waiting for the next step; basting.  I’m going to try a couple of different basting techniques because this is the first time I’ve ever paper pieced a quilt. I’ve really enjoyed having something else to work on while I’ve been at home with the little man.  I’ve had to learn that things won’t happen in the timeframe that I want, but they will eventually happen – I just need to make the time when I can get the time.

I’m hoping that I’ll have all the hexagons basted in the next week and then once that’s done I’ll be on to sewing them together.  I can’t wait.  (Well I can in some ways because the thought of all that hand sewing fills me with a little bit of dread… but I keep reminding myself that practice makes perfect!)