Vintage Quilt Thursday: Hexie Tutorial

Welcome to Vintage Quilt Thursday! Last week I shared a few fantastic vintage Grandmother's Garden quilts made with hexies.

Today I am sharing how I sew my hexies. There are several different method and each has its merits.

This is my hand sewing kit. I can take it with me or have it sitting my my sofa. In it I keep a small pair of scissors, neutral thread, sewing needles, hexie papers (I am using 1" papers), and 2.5" squares.

The bag is made with the Sew Together Bag pattern. Heather wrote a Sew-A-Long for this pattern and made it easy for anyone to make a triple zipper pouch.

Moda Candies are the perfect size for the 1" hexie papers. 
I used those and hand cut 2.5" squares from scraps and fat quarters. When hand cutting I lay one paper on the fabric (folded several times if a fat quarter or large scrap) and use it to eye ball a square and cut.

In my left hand (I am right handed) I hold one paper and one square, the paper on the wrong side of the fabric.

Fold the top right corner down and then fold the adjoining side down. Hold with your thumb.

With a threaded needle, single strand with a knot at the long end, go through both fabrics in the corner.

Take two stitches in each corner. Do the same fold and 2 stitches in each corner.

All done. You can see I did not go back to the original corner so you see no thread stretched to that corner.

I do not trim my fabric but leave it as a square.

Joining 2 hexies.
Place 2 hexies right sides together.  Use small, shallow stitches to whip stitch the 2 sides together.

Using shallow stitches will ensure your stitches do not show on the front. And if they do, thats ok too.

Ta-da.

Here is the back.

There are many different configurations when joining the hexies.

I am going to share 3 hexie projects (2 quilts and one accessory) that show 2 different configurations.

The first project, a quick and easy baby quilt, will be up Saturday. See you then!