Monday, May 11, 2009

Monday Mini Quilt with a Hexagon Twist

Wow! There are a lot of eager baby quilt makers out there. I enjoyed reading all your comments, especially the ones that mentioned soon-to-be babies as an impetus for making quilts.
According to the random number generator, the winning comments were:

cheryl norwood
said...

Love your fabric, pillows and quilts---looks like a cute book, too!

Congratulations, Cheryl! Email me your address and I'll pass that along to the folks at Lark so you can receive your copy ASAP.

This week's Monday mini quilt is all about my newest shape obsession, hexagons. Well, maybe not exactly an obsession, but I am making a large bed sized quilt with hexagons and I've done a fair amount of English paper piecing of hexagons, so, perhaps the phrase strongly held interest applies.

Like last week's mini, this one utilizes a lot of leftovers from my scraps basket. I drafted a hexagon that measured about 4" in width and used that to create my patches. I didn't paper piece this quilt though. I machine pieced them with "Y" seams. The sewing wasn't exactly super fast, but a whole lot quicker than hand sewing.

And it made simple quilt-in the-ditch possible as I didn't have to worry about using the quilting to help hold the top together like I would have had I used paper piecing.

Frankly, the hardest, most time consuming aspect of this quilt was the binding. Because it needed to go around unusually shaped corners, I cut all the strips on the bias and then had to carefully manipulate it in and out of each edge. Also, I needed to hand stitch the backside of the binding rather than using a machine zig-zag.

I'll be adding these images to the Mini quilt Monday pool over at flickr. As of this minute, 12:40pm CST, there are 199 members in the group, so that means there are a whole bunch of wonderful mini quilts to enjoy. Run...don't walk (interenetly speaking, of course), to see these quilts.

And, as an appetizer to the group, take a gander at these two mini quilts sent to me via email this morning. This one is by Rossie. She's used a dye technique that's near and dear to my heart to craft her little beauty. And this one is by Chawne, aka cauchy09. If you get a chance to see Chawne's mini, take some time to check out her photostream. This woman has made some wonderful quilts.

Happy Monday!

PS. For those of you looking for more stitch in dye bundles and 1/4 pound scrap bundles, they'll be more in the shop this afternoon.














13 comments:

Andi said...

A gorgeous little quilt.
The binding is inspiring.
Andi :-)

Janet said...

I'm sure the binding was a bit tricky. Fabulous job. I enjoyed looking at the others you sited.

Malissa said...

I stayed up late to finish my submission for the week. I'm still hacking away at my hexagons but that will be my submission at a future week. I love the MQM idea. It's so genius to have it after the weekend, so that those of us who work M-F have a chance to finish something up.

chawne said...

such a lovely little quilt, as always! thanks for the shout-out.

Unni Strand said...

A lovely quilt!
When I see your new Monday Mini Quilt, I think; Has it really been a week already?

Lily Boot said...

ooh I love it - it makes me want to put it on the kitchen bench with an old fashioned ceramic egg carton on top, filled with beautiful spring eggs.

Amanda Elizabeth said...

this is just so gorgeous!!! I'm dying to learn these y seams you mentioned!!! fannntastic!

Terriaw said...

I have always wanted to make something with hexagon! This would be a great starter project for me. I love it, and especially the fabrics you used here. Such a cool binding too! I need to get in on this Monday mini quilt movement!

Quiltefia said...

I love this little quilt!! And lucky me, i ordered some of your fabrics and I think they must turn into a little hexagon quilt too!!

Vicki W said...

What a cute quilt!

Cheryl Arkison said...

I would have lost it over that binding!
Looks amazing.

Cherry Runway said...

How pretty!!

sewtakeahike said...

Hi Malka,
I just found this post about the binding. Looks like our experiences were very similar. I sewed the front of the binding by machine but had to hand sew the back on by hand (which I have NEVER had to do and hope to never do again!). That was the most time consuming part of making my hex quilt as well!