Hexagons Tutorial

I am sorely tempted to just show the pictures (I was very careful and took a pic at EVERY step. :)  I think my tendency is to write too much which probably confuses rather than clarifies....but that's what I do best right? hehehe  So here goes:

Your basic Hexagon.  My template is called "Quilt Sense" and included 3 nested hexagons and a 60 degree triangle our of plexiglas.  Manufacturer's Website  You can use any size hexagon you want.  These end up (after the sewing) as 1 inch on a side....which are very tiny. :)

Take your first hexagon and mark as shown here on the right.  Those are the points where the 1/4 seam allowances meet up.  This is the secret to doing these by machine.  (The traditional method is to piece them by hand.)  You will always start and stop on points like that....never sew to the edge.  If you are worried about your estimation of this 1/4 inch, you can mark each hexagon.  I only marked the first one (and picked out a few stitches occasionally when I over shot the end mark.)

An alternate idea would be to put a piece of tape on your machine to mark the edge of the hexagon when you are supposed to stop.  After the first one you will always know where to start.  You only have to do the stopping.

I also back stitched 1 stitch on start and stop so it would hold together and not pull apart while I was getting the next pieces in to position.

Doing hexagons on the machine is very thread intensive as you take the work off the machine every time to re-orient it.  I am sure that you can chain quilt some of the steps and then put bigger pieces together, but since this is my first project with these I did them all separate.  I use cheap cone thread (1000 won at Dongdaemun) so the waste of a little thread was not too worrisome to me this time.

I didn't worry too much if I missed the mark by small amounts since my final project is going to be quilted, is fairly small and not subject to the stresses of fort building.

So this is what you should have so far.  The reason you have to stop and start 1/4 from the edge is so you can get the layers you DON'T want out of the way.

So with the "pink" folded out of the way, line up your next hexagon.  Turn it so you can see the end of the last line you sewed and start there, sewing down to your marked or estimated stopping point.

When you start adding more and more hexagons, there are more pieces that need to be kept out of the way, but just go slow and make sure you are only sewing through 2 fabrics at any given time and it WILL work. :) I promise.

See how the stitching lines make a corner where they meet up on the palm tree? That is what you want every time.  If you look really closely at the palm tree pic you can see the shadow of the pink fabric that is folded back out of the way.

Now open it up and it will look something like this....and you can probably guess which seam you need to sew next.  It is just the exact same process.  Line up the two floral prints along the edge.  Make sure the palm tree fabric is out of the way.  Start where the previous stitching ends and end where you estimate your seam allowance. :)

In the pic on the left, you can see how the palm tree will be folded in half if I hold the two floral hexagons lined up and flat.

When you open it out this is what you will see.  With "normal" quilting shapes like squares and triangles you have right angles that you can sew off the end.  When they go together they make right angles.  These Hexagons come together not in a 90 degree angle but a 120 degree one.  Whenever you have a quilt block that can't be neatly divided in to squares you can use this technique.  (Even some 90 degree angles can use this technique if you need it.)  One very well known traditional block that uses this technique is "Lone Star" . If you read down in the article it talks about how "difficult" this is and one of the reasons is THIS thing we just did.  Not difficult, more like "tricky."

Now you keep adding in rows or circles until your work reaches the desired size, or you use up your hexagons. :) It will probably curl up and not look like much at this stage. Just wait until you give it a good pressing. On mine, I pressed the seams in the directions they seemed to prefer. When you are planning to machine quilt it is less worrisome where you place your seam allowances. If you are planning to hand quilt you may wish to press the corners open to spread some of the bulk.

When the place mats were completely constructed I pressed the piece out with the seam allowances up so I could see what they were doing. Once they were behaving, I turned it over and gave it a good hot steam press and everything turned out smooth and even.


In a few days I'll take pics of the place mats and their finishing process. But until then, feel free to get started. We will swap hexagons at the April Meeting. (In my I Spy placemats I have about 120 different fabrics. The more the merrier.) k.