Tag Archives: hexagons

January 30, 2014 · 9:38 AM

Hexagon Zippered Pouch

I made up a little pouch yesterday.

Hexagon pouch made with Riley Blake Fabric

The Modern Quilt Guild provided 6 fat eighths of this Riley Blake Fabric and challenged its members all around the world to make something from them and post a picture by Feb. 17th.

DCMQG’s group of fabric for the Riley Blake fabric challenge

The rules are simple – you can make anything that is quilted using these fabrics or any Riley Blake fabric and you can also add in any solids that you wish to.

Back of pouch

I just wanted to make something up with the bundle we were given. I used the whole piece of the solid grey for the outside and a white and grey stripe for the inside. I simply cut the grey piece in half and quilted both halves.

Quilted wavy lines and added some leaves to one line just for fun.

I then made English Paper Pieced hexagons out of the other 4 fabrics into 2 flowers and appliquéd them onto the outside.

EPP hexagon flower in progress

I wanted this flower to be flowing off the edge.

I inserted the zipper using my favorite technique of using little fabric tabs on both sides of the cut zipper to make the final product all neat and tidy. How this works is that there doesn’t end up being any zipper parts caught in the sewn side seam. In fact, I try to make it such that the fabric tabs aren’t caught there either.

Zipper inserted. You can’t see it here, but the lining is also attached at this point.

I had intended to make a flat bag, but right at the very end of sewing it up, I decided to box the bottom corners so that the bag would stand up.

Boxed corners on the bottom

This kind of messed with my hexagon flower placement, but I do think it makes the bag more useful.

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Filed under DC Modern Quilt Guild, Gifts, Purses and Bags

Tagged as DCMQG, EPP, hexagons, Modern Quilt Guild, Riley Blake fabric, zipper insertion, zippered pouch

August 11, 2012 · 4:13 PM

Hexagon Resources

From the book “hexa go-go”

I’ve been a little hexagon crazed lately and I don’t think that I am alone. The saying “what was once old, is new again” comes to mind. There are a lot of good places online to find information and see projects made from English paper pieced hexagons.

Do you belong to Flickr? It is a photo sharing website and a place where many quilters share pictures and descriptions of their quilts. There are different Flickr groups where you can see hundreds of photos of things made of pieced hexagons. A few with the most pictures are (Handsome) Hexies and Grandma’s Garden. There is also an English paper piecing group on Flickr where I found this wonderful link to a picture tutorial by Sunshine Creations’s Vintage Threads.

English paper piecing tutorial by Sunshine’s Creations Vintage Threads

This tutorial includes “Ways of cutting fabric”, “Basting” and “Assembly”. Very concise but it covers so much information!

Do you know about Craftsy.com? Craftsy offers online video classes involving quilting, knitting, and garment sewing to name a few. Most of the classes have a fee which is usually quite reasonable and are often on sale. You can download the video instructions and watch it whenever and for as many times as you wish. It is also set up so that you can communicate with the instructor and others in the class through a forum. I have bought and watched several of these classes and I really enjoy them. Craftsy offers a FREE block of the month class by Amy Gibson. It started in January 2012 and the April blocks are English paper pieced hexagons.

Craftsy April Block of the Month

This Craftsy class gives great video instructions for making this and another hexagon themed block. If you enroll in this free class, you will be able to see the instructions for all of the blocks from the other months as well. Each month focuses on a completely different technique.

There is a wonderful quilt book published recently called “hexa go – go” by Tacha Bruecher.

This book includes 16 english paper pieced quilt projects as well as basic instructions for the technique in general. Two of the projects seem especially suited for working on in front of the 2012 Olympics.

Union Jack

Stars and Stripes

Would you like to watch some short video tutorials on piecing hexagons? YouTube is the place for that. Here are a couple that I thought were helpful.

As you can see, it’s easy to spend LOTS of time looking at and learning about hexagons instead of actually sewing them! Got to go sew now. Hope that you do too!

Traveling hexagons

If you have followed my last couple of blog posts, you know that I’ve been traveling. I brought the ultimate traveling sewing project with me – English paper pieced hexagons!

A group of hexagons sewn together.

Before I left home, I grabbed this great set of fat quarters that my dear niece had given me.

Fun group of fat quarters

I had already purchased a package of 100 one-inch hexagon precut paper shapes.

Package of precut paper hexagons

I found these at a quilt shop in Illinois but you can also buy them online here. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. A 1″ hexagon means that each side of the hexagon measures one inch. These are made out of light card stock which is perfect. I also cut a couple hexagons out of some card stock I had that were 1/4 inch larger all the way around. I used these as a rough template to cut my fabric with. I simply cut the fabrics into strips, stacked about 4 strips, and then used a rotary cutter to cut around the hexagon template. Some of the fabrics had patterns on them that I felt would look better if they were not randomly cut. In order to “fussy cut” these fabrics, I cut the 1 ” shape out of the middle of my template, placed it where I wanted on the fabric and cut each one out individually.

Using template to see what final hexagon will look like.

Using template to “fussy cut” hexagon

This gave me a wonderful collection of fabric hexagons which are the right size to use with my 1″ papers.

Fabric hexagons and paper pieces.

There are a lot of different instructions for english paper piecing. Some have you actually baste the fabric to the paper which I do not like to do. I hold the paper against the wrong side of the fabric, fold over one side, then another and baste the fold where they intersect. Keep doing this around the shape until all sides are basted down.

Back of basted hexagon.

After basting many of these, they can be whip-stitched together by putting right sides together and sewing one side at a time. It is an extremely accurate way of piecing geometric shapes together and is all done by hand. This is what makes English paper piecing so great to travel with! Small pieces, needle and thread. So little to carry with you!

Front side

Reverse side.

Here is the little case I carry this project in which I bought at the Container Store.

Hexagon tool box

Everything I need!

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my hexagons. I’m thinking of making a tote bag or pillow. I guess it will depend on how many I get put together.

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Filed under Tutorials, Uncategorized

Tagged as English paper piecing, fabric hexagons, hand sewing, hexagons, travel sewing