I Spy Hexagon quilt {WIP 6 of 12}

Well after a mammoth quilting effort over the last couple of weeks I have finally finished this quilt. Here is a post which explains how I built the quilt top, but there are plenty of other posts scattered through my blog as I have been working on this quilt for 13 months!

I could have gone in so many directions with the sashing and borders in this quilt. The safe and 'modern' version would have been to sash in white, which I think would have looked fabulous. But I really wanted to gift this quilt to my son and white just didnt seem a practical and manly enough choice for him.

I think I have come up with a pretty unique interpretation of a few popular quilt techniques and styles; I Spy quilt, paper piecing, and the sashed block. Whether it 'works' I leave for you to decide, but personally I love it :)

I had a last minute change of plan with the borders, ripped off a grey outer border and introduced some black and white polkadot. I then took the quilt down to my local quilt stores (LQS) and picked out the backing and borders.

For the backing I used some Denise Schmidt fabric (current range at Spotlight). This was very hard to pick, as I tend to gravitate towards funny juvenile prints, and I had to keep forcing myself back to plainer prints. I also felt it had to be a predominately one colour (preferably grey) with some blue or black in it to tie in with the front and border.

The quilting.... It took F O R E V E R!!! but I knew I would love it. I stitched a 1" grid over the entire centre area of the quilt, ditched around the skinny striped border, and then stitched 1/2" lines around the outer polka dot border. The 1" grid will serve a second function at stabilising the hand stitching in all those hexagon blocks.

Here is how the 1" grid looks on the back.

I gave George the quilt this morning, and he immediately sat on it and began picking his favourite hexagon from each block (he was too quick for me to photograph properly...). I didnt start out thinking of this project as an 'I spy' quilt, but because so many of the hexagons feature 'things' that is essentially what this quilt is. A very fancy, scrappy Ispy quilt.

I love this pic. He put the quilt on the floor and invented some sort of game involving sharks in rivers and an alien man killing (or saving??) them.