Pages

Saturday, June 1, 2024

Hexie Harvest Quilt


This is the story of my Hexie Harvest Quilt - which was finished mid June 2023, almost 12 months ago. I was delighted when Jodi of Tales of Cloth invited me in September 2022 to be one of her volunteers to share about this beautiful sampler quilt for her 2023 quilt-along.

The pattern (one of many from Jodi's Hexie Handbook) calls for seven each of 15 different block designs, although I must admit I included more of my favourite blocks and fewer of others. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring all the different block options and seeing how well they played together. 

Work in progress, I found the templates very useful too

So many beautiful block designs to stitch

Experimenting with colour placement in my Lilly Pilly blocks


Plenty of opportunity for fussy cutting in the Rosemallow design

As the design is somewhat busy, I opted for the version which incorporated joining triangles, allowing some space between each block, as well as selecting mostly light-mid saturated fabrics, including many solids. Each block finishes as a 3" hexagon.





The Hexie Harvest Quilt proved to be a fun quilt to make with lots of opportunity for exploration and plenty of variety to maintain interest. I let myself stitch blocks randomly, rather than completing all seven of each design together, making the experience more playful and all around enjoyable.



When it came time to quilt, I chose to hand quilt, using DMC Perle 8 thread in white. Initially I outline quilted inside each triangle only, however after binding and washing I decided it needed to little more to so I hand quilted a little circle in the middle of each block, using a small lid as a template.

After much deliberation, I decided to use the same fun eucalyptus print for the binding as I had for the backing. I didn't want to choose just one colour for the binding as I felt it may set the tone of the quilt.


I finished my Hexie Harvest Quilt at 11 rows of nine blocks each, slightly smaller than Jodi's 11 rows of 10 blocks each. Measuring 55" x 57.5" (140cm x 146cm), it's a very useful lap size quilt, one to brighten any day.


The Hexie Harvest papers, templates, triangles and pattern are all still available in Jodi's shop as I write this.