It's all about the Hexis!!

Craftsy 2012 BOM

Craftsy 2012 BOM


 

Well hello there! If you are just joining me, welcome. If you have been here before, it's nice to see you again. One of my latest obsessions is English paper piecing. It's done all by hand and if you have everything ready to go, it's quite simple and can be done anywhere. I first tried English paper piecing (EPP) during the Craftsy 2012 BOM taught by Amy Gibson. I had a friend who started EPP a few years back and always thought she was nuts for trying to make a quilt out of these small hexagons. I guess EPP really isn't for the faint at heart but for those of us who want to step away from the sewing machine and get some good old fashioned hand sewing into the mix.  The first two pictures are my the EPP blocks from Craftsy BOM 2012, this is where I fell in love with EPP.

Right now I'm working on a project pouch from the book Tiny Obsessions by Vicki Bellino.  I purchased this book from www.connectingthreads.com.

I have in my stash, 1 1/4 hexis and a bunch of batiks that I used on a log cabin quilt.  I went through my fabric stash and just pulled out all the batiks I had on hand and started cutting them into 3 inch squares.  I find that 3 inch squares give me the most fabric to fold over with minimum bulk on a 1 1/4 hexi and cutting a square is just easier than trying to cut out circles from your fabric.  I'm all about efficiency and time saving since I don't have a lot of time to work on projects.  I'm not sure how many hexis I will need since I blew up the pattern to more than 250% of what the book tells me to and I'm using larger hexis (don't worry, once I know how many I need I'll put that info in here).  I made it bigger because I was using bigger hexis and I wanted a larger pouch that I could stash all my sewing machine feet in.  I'm not done with it yet, and I haven't actually pieced any of the hexis together, I'm still in the basting stage for all my hexis.  I'm trying to get a good variety of colors in so I can mix and match. 

If you like EPP, I highly recommend purchasing Tiny Obsessions, it's chalk full of fun, little projects that you can do quickly and would be easy to make them larger by using larger hexis.

If you don't have any hexis on hand, you can always look for a free picture online and then print your own on cardstock or something heavier than regular printer paper and then cut them out.  Hexis are measured for their length on one side.  So the ones that I have are 1 1/4 hexis, which means they measure on one of the sides at 1 1/4 inches.  Hexis come in a variety of sizes and you can get almost any shape for EPP.  If you don't want to print and cut you can go to your local quilt store (I recommend a local shop and not a big retail store because big retail stores don't always have what you need, and you're supporting small business).  I bought mine from a local quilt store in Yelm, I love going there because they have so much fabric to look at, I lose track of all time when I'm there, plus they usually have everything I went there to get and much, much more.  If you're new to the hexis you also might want to consider fabric stick glue (it looks just like a glue stick) or some extra pins to hold the fabric in place.  The fabric glue will come off when washed and is just there as a light adhesive to make your job easier.  I used pins to baste the fabric to my hexis for the blocks pictured above, for only a few of the current ones I used the glue stick.  I've found as I get more comfortable basting hexis, I don't need anything extra to hold the fabric in place, just my hands. 

Once you've got all your hexis basted you can start whip stitching them together, it's fairly easy to do and if you cut a long enough thread, you can whip stitch a bunch of hexis together without having to tie off every time you move to another hexi.  As always, whip stich them right sides together so you can hide the tail of the beginning thread under the back.

After your hexis are all stitched together in the pattern they need to be in, you can remove the basting threads and templates from the insides of the hexis.  You do this afterwards so the hexis hold their shape while you are stitching them together.  Paper pieces can be re-used, I use mine until there are too many holes in the paper or the template is starting to fall apart, it is paper after all and it will end up losing some of it's toughness after it's had numerous holed punched into it and ironed a bunch of times.

If you've never given hexis a shot, try a small project to see what you think.  It might become a love you never thought you'd have.

If you'd like to see a hexi tutorial, please let me know and I can get one out. 
Enjoy those hexis
Rachel