WIP: Hexagon Quilt

As the whole point of this blog is to document my sewing projects, here is one of my current works in progress.

The Hexagon Quilt

August 13th 2013
19 flowers finished and some sections started.

Started: 3rd June 2013. Here are my first two flowers:

The first two flowers - 3rd June 2013

Finished: Who knows!?! A long, long time from now! It's a great portable project though. As it turns out, the Cambridge to King's Cross train = one finished flower.

Size: Aiming for Queen sized, or whatever size my bed is when I finally finish the monster.

Quilt top: My hexagon templates are courtesy of the wonderful Geta. The flowers are "Painted Mums" from Heather Bailey's Freshcut range, which I adore. I have no idea whether I have enough of it to finish the quilt. Probably not. I should go do some maths. The centres are a green solid which used to be part of an IKEA pillow case, a yellow polka dot which I bought for this quilt back in 2008 and a peachy pink dot from my stash.

Backing: Currently I'm thinking solid white cotton. This may change, obviously.

Binding: I LOVE this self binding method that badskirt introduced me to but I don't know if I have the patience for it. I could also bind it with the Freshcut peachypink dotted paisley. Hmmm... perhaps I should buy some more before it sells out.

Batting: I recently made a quilt with Hobbs Heirloom wool batting which was gorgeous and so easy to quilt. I'm waiting to see how the quilt holds up when it's washed a couple of times as it's the first time I've used wool batting.

Quilting: I have some gorgeous YLI hand quilting thread in yellow, green, and peachy pink. I'm in love. I've also been using YLI quilting thread to sew together my hexagons and it's a dream to work with! I like that it's a little stronger than "normal" hand sewing thread. Also, I was given a box including some lovely browns as a gift and I don't plan on quilting anything in brown anytime soon so they're great for sewing my hexagons together!

YLI 100% cotton hand quilting thread
yellow, spring green, and peach

Progress:
13th August 2013: 19 flowers
31st December 2013: 28 flowers
20th January 2014: 30 flowers

I love making lists. Here's my list of progress for this quilt:
finished small flowers:15
finished partial large flowers: 4
Finished sections: 3 pink, 3 green + 5 yellow
basted & ironed hexagons in boxes: 131 flowered, 43 white, 0 yellow, 10 green, 9 pink

My original plan was to try to make four small flowers per month, which means that I'm slightly behind but not by much. Weee!  Also, I made loads of basted hexagons in preparation, so that counts, right? I store my basted, ironed hexagons in these handy macaron boxes from Pierre Hermé, which are just the right size.

Basted hexagons in macaron pastry boxes

While this is a great storage solution, carrying my hexagon quilt project around with me currently involves a rather unsightly zip-lock freezer bag. I really want to make one of these absolutely genius travel kits. It's one of the many sewing projects on my "to do before the new job starts" list.

Love, me xx