Leaps and bounds

My June entry into the 12WIPSin2012 challenge is my Hexie quilt. In my original WIP list (written Dec 2011) I mentioned that the Quilt had stalled the previous May when I had only half the required hexagons complete. There are 330 hand pieced 2" hexagons in this quilt, divided in into sets of 22 and then hand stitched into 15 hexie blocks.  I made my first Hexie block in March 2011 and finished the last in May 2012.

Right from inception of this quilt I had the general layout in my head... 15 hexagon blocks cut down into a large square and sashed in grey in a 3 x 5 layout. I was going to worry about the small details like size of sashings etc when I got there.

Over a year later, when I finally got there, I was really nervous about cutting up the hexagon blocks and making a mistake. So I used the iPad App TouchDraw to help visualise the layout and sashing sizes BEFORE I started slicing and sewing.  I decided to cut down the Hexagons to the biggest square I could (13.5") and sash with 4.5" grey homespun. However, that was going to result in a really long quilt- much longer that needed for a single bed. I toyed with removing one of the rows of hexagons blocks, leaving a 3 x 4 layout of blocks.  However, since that represented about 3 months of hand stitching time I just couldn't do it!They all had to take pride of place on the front of the quilt!

The above TouchDraw image shows a to scale layout of the quilt-  13" (finished) pink 'hexagon' blocks with 3" (finished) horizontal sashing and 4" (finished) vertical sashings. The only deviation I have made in the final quilt is to make the green border thinner- and its not green (as  you will see below).

The moment of truth! cutting into the hand stitched hexagon block.

I immediately added the horizontal sashing to stop the hand stitches unravelling and secured the other two sides by running a row of stitching 1/8" away from the edge.

With the sashing on.

The first outer border.

I have stalled here while I audition the thin border. My original drawing had a 2" border in green. But the black and white stripe was calling to me so I decided to let it have a test run. I love it, however, 2" is too much, and I have cut it down to 1.5"  for a thin 1" border in the finished quilt.

After a 14 month poodle with the hand stitching, this quilts has come along in leaps and bounds in just one week.