FINISHED! Hexies By Halves Quilt-Along

A few weeks ago I started the Hexies By Halves Quilt Along with Polly.  

Today I finished my quilt!!

It finished at 44" x 59" after washing.  

(I forgot to measure before washing but it was around 46" wide because 45" backing was not quite wide enough!)

I used a half-yard bundle of Red White and Currant by Henry Glass purchased from Sisters and Quilters.  (I did not use all the fabrics, and did not use the full half-yard of any of the fabrics).

Backing was purchased at Hancock Fabrics (I don't know what it is, but I labored long and hard over the decision).  I took swatches of the hexies with me and pulled and put back bolt after bolt.  I knew I wanted a gray color ... and I knew 45"would not be wide enough so it would need to be pieced.  So I got a mottled gray print that wouldn't really show the seam where I had to piece it.  

I finally finished the binding this morning.  On all (uhm, both) of my previous quilts I've machine bound both the front and back and loved the results.  I tried that with this one but was not hating the way it looked, so I ended up machine sewing to the front and hand sewing the back.  

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I did have one little spot on the back where there was a pucker that I didn't see until after it was quilted over.  It's really minor and close to one edge and I decided I could live with it.  

This is a great pattern and Polly's tutorials were very easy to follow.  Cutting the first couple of fabrics was slow (for me) because I was trying to be very careful and make sure everything lined up perfectly.  After I got a rhythm going it went very fast.  

Polly will soon be offering this pattern in her Etsy shop.  If I can do this as my third quilt, anybody can do it!  

You can see progress pics on my facebook page but here are the final pics.

These were taken the moment I finished the binding.  Indoors with very poor lighting.

Kid tested and approved!! 

We then moved outside, where she wanted the gray side.  (She seems to prefer the back of all my quilts over the front!)

 But she likes the front too!

All the following pictures were made after the wash.  I was sooooooo thankful those reds did not run! (I used two Shout color catchers and they were only slightly pink after the first wash, so I ran the wash again and used one color catcher that came out completely white.  Yay!)

 

(I've edited this post to add these pics made later with a different camera that I haven't used in years! What a difference a good camera makes!)

 

 

 I will be using the pattern again in the future.  I think these large hexies would really look great on a queen or king sized bed.

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WIP Wednesday

New WIP for GabbieGirl's birthday (October). 

 

She loves all things 'Roll Tide' so she's getting a quilt/blanket with Roll Tide fabrics.

 

I have six rows put together, and two more rows of bricks that just need to be 'mortared' to the 'wall'.  I think I am going to need 12 rows altogether.  I'm just kind of winging it based on the size of the backing I bought (58x72 piece of Roll Tide fleece).

 

 

 

And my other WIP is almost done.  I got my Hexies by Halves quilted and now I just have to trim it and do the binding.  I opted for quilting on the diagonal in only one direction because I really like the parallelogram effect on the back.

 

You can't really see the quilting on the front very well.

 

Hopefully I will get it bound this weekend!  

 

Linking up with Lee @ Freshly Pieced and Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation.

WIP Wednesday

I'm still working on my hexies by halves with Polly.  I found backing material last weekend.  Hopefully I can get that done this weekend. 

 

I had a charm pack of Holiday In The Pines that I'd ordered quite some time ago (because I just had to have some Christmas fabric right then) and I finally found an (easy) idea I liked for using the charm pack (aside from just sewing them all together).  I only have one charm pack so I guess this might turn out to be just a table runner or some placemats or something.  But for now it's something small to work on when I have a few minutes to sew.

 

 

Had a couple of odd fat quarters lying around, so I decided to try one of the bowl buddies I've been seeing lately.  I used this tutorial.

 

 

 

And I finished this little gem up Monday night, gave it a wash last night, and it is ready to go to Sadie. 

 

 

 

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Please remember to visit the links in my right sidebar to see all the great projects by my fellow bloggers!  Thanks to so many of them who host weekly linky parties for us!!

 

Tuesday's Tales

So, here is where I am on my Hexies by Halves quilt along with Polly.

 

Top is done!! 

 

It needs another good (really good!) pressing, and the sides have to be trimmed, but I will wait until I am ready to start quilting to do that. 

 

The light was fading, so these pics aren't the best.

 

 

And I got Sadie's quilt top pieced last night. 

 

This is just charm packs of Sasparilla (Riley Blake).

 

(These pics are really bad because they were made indoors, very late)

 

 

I hope to get to quilt this one pretty soon.  Nothing fancy.  Probably just straight line, maybe on the diagonal if I'm feeling adventurous. 

 

I did get to babysit Saturday night and let Sadie try out the new quilt!

 

More pics here.
 

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Please remember to visit the links in my right sidebar to see all the great projects by my fellow bloggers!  Thanks to so many of them who host weekly linky parties for us!!

Need Opinions, Suggestions, Input ...

I had to stand on the coffee table to get the whole thing.   There is just no natural light in my living room (maybe because I put a very dark blind on the window behind the tv) !

 

In the big picture it looks like I have blacks next to blacks and greys next to greys but in the closeups you can tell they are more different than it looks.  Hmmmm, do I see a clump of reds I need to separate?  Noooo .. because then I will have a clump of blacks?

 

Hopefully you can see the pattern differences in these closeups. 

 

They really do contrast pretty well in 'real life'.

 

 

I have to get this all figured out - and a master photo taken so I can print it out to sew by - because I have to pick all this up shortly after noon tomorrow because I get to babysit my brand new granddaughter tomorrow evening/night!

 

 

Half Hexie Quilt Along

Lesson 3 of the Hexies By Halves Quilt Along with Polly.

All the fabrics are cut ... now I'm struggling with placement.  Maybe it'll look different in the light of a new day (or in the light of any day, I can't really tell anything about it in artificial light).