Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Village - paper piecing the hexagons tutorial

Hi All,

In case you haven't done any paper piecing hexagons, the following is the way I do mine. Undoubtedly there are many ways of doing it. The one thing though is that it is rather addictive!

In the Village quilt,( Liza has it for shipping now http://www.gloriouscolor.com/store.php?cat=574 ) there are quite a few hexagons. The Grandmother Flower hedge has hexagons which have 3/4" sides and the outer border have 1/2" sides. You will need to buy these hexagon paper pieces, check with your local quilt stores or order them from paperpieces.com, also, they have the acrylic cutting templates with 3/8" seam allowance. This is a better seam allowance for paper piecing than the usual 1/4".
If you would like to see the fabrics I've used in these hexagons, go to the Pinterest, the address is www.pinterest.com/km/0089/

There is this gadget made by Marti Mitchell which allows you to see what your hexagon or your star will look like when it is assembled. Put the template on the chosen motif or area of the fabric and then pop the 2 mirror sides snug on the template and look, voila!

                     


It is amazing what you can find using this mirror.
choose the motif on the fabric, place the template, it has 3/8" seam allowance from Paper Pieces.
                                        
mark the motif on the template with texta pen so that you can find this exact area in the fabric, you will need to cut at the exact spot 6 times. the 7th one is the centre. the texta pen marking can be wiped off using acetone, the nail polish remover.
                                         
pin the paper hexagon to the fabric
                                        
sew across diagonally with the knot of thread on the RIGHT side of the piece for easy removal later.
fold down the seam allowance and stitch all the way around.
                                       
completed paper pieced hexagon.

As you are cutting the hexagons, thread a needle with a quilting thread and place each stack of 7 fabrics on this thread and knot each lot of 7 pieces, you won't loose them then.
                                         
                                       
                                         
do the same with the paper pieced hexagons
                                        
to assemble the hexagons, you might want to try this.
                                        
sew the outer hexagons to the centre first so that you can make sure that they are attached the correct way, then stitch the rest, on the wrong side.

So, there it is, have fun, K









Posted by at
Labels:

5 comments:

  1. Launch Business in DelhiFebruary 20, 2015 at 4:59 AM

    Awesome work.Just wanted to drop a comment and say I am new to your blog and really like what I am reading.Thanks for the share

    ReplyDelete
  2. MarionFebruary 26, 2015 at 7:17 AM

    Making hexies is addictive; cutting them out? Not so much.

    ReplyDelete
  3. kim mcleanFebruary 28, 2015 at 12:42 AM

    Cutting up is a bit of a drag. I was thinking the other day, what if we follow the Stack and Whack method where we layer the 6 repeats of the fabric at precisely the same spot, pin them together and cut those Hexies with the acrylic cutting template in the one go? Usually the big print fabrics give the best hexagon florets. Has anyone done the Stack and Whack method? Love to hear your thoughts, kim

    ReplyDelete
  4. judy12March 14, 2015 at 1:24 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BobbiMarch 15, 2015 at 10:11 PM

    If you have those acrylic templates, you can on them so you can position them on your fabric to cut each one the same -

    Stick a piece of clear tape (Scotch tape in the US) on the acrylic where you want to trace a motif. Draw on top of the tape. Use the template it for each piece. When done, peel off the tape (if you leave one corner of the tape doubled, you can easily grab it to pull it off). Your template is clean and this is a lot easier than finding a pen that will "stick" on the template and then cleaning it with some solution.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)