Hexies Galore - Grandma's Flower Garden quilt

My "hexie habit" began March 6th, when I folded my first 2 x 2 inch square around a die-cut, paper hexagon shape, and basted it in place - the first of about 3,500 hexies that will eventually become a single-bed-sized quilt, entirely hand-sewn.

Am I crazy? Well, it's entirely possible. It all started because my husband likes to watch TV and movies (DVDs)... a lot! I could easily not even own a TV, much less watch it. He likes me to watch with him, keep him company, somebody with whom to discuss whatever he's watching. Ooops.... big conflict of interests here!  In order to oblige him, I have to be doing something with my hands, something simple enough that I can still devote some of my attention to the box. Turns out hexies are the PERFECT solution! They also work well for when we take the ferry off island, parked in the waiting line or on the ship.

In five months, I have:

1. cut 3,500+ two-inch squares of fabric
2. basted 3,500+ hexies, which are 3/4 inch on a side (pictures on this post)
3. hand-sewn 213 single-ring flowers 
4. hand-sewn a pathway ring of white hexies around 78 of the single-ring flowers

Still waaaaaaay more to do - many more hours of movies, documentaries, etc. with my husband. I reckon I've spent a little over 400 hours on it so far - that's TEN 40-hour work weeks in 5 months. This has actually been fun. Each of the 213 flowers is a different fabric, so there's always something a little new.

Thought you might like to see the steps for making the single ring flowers...

Arrange petal hexies in pleasing way around center.

Put one petal face-to-face with the center, and whip-stitch them together. I generally take about 12-13 stitches per 3/4" side.

Join and stitch the first and second petal together along the side seam. Knot at the end of each side.

After stitching the side seam and knotting, slip the needle under the folded flap of the side to return to the center hexie.

Double knot the center hexie to the second petal. Then whip stitch them together. The first petal will have to be folded a bit.

Continue adding petals around the center. This is the side seam between the 5th and last petal. I double knot at the end of each side seam.

Whip stitch the last petal to the center.

To complete the last side seam, the entire flower must be folded as shown above.

The back side of the completed flower looks like this. Click on any of the pictures to see detail of stitching. The paper pieces and basting stitches stay in the hexies until the entire quilt top is whip-stitched together. When the top is complete, it is ironed on the back side; the basting stitches and paper pieces are then removed, and the quilt sandwich is made.

Stack of 50 hexie flowers! Only 163 to go....

Here's a stack of 50. Altogether, I made 213 of them, all with different prints.

The next step is sewing the white "pathway" around half of the flowers. (The others get green print hexies to represent leaves.) That takes about 1 hour per flower.

Here are the first 50 of them - 67 to go.

After finishing the white rings, I'll start sewing them together in groups of 5 flowers with green hexie leaves between them. I'll post pictures and another progress report after I've done a few.