Saturday, May 14, 2016

Hexie 2 Report - 733 Hexie Flowers Finished!

hexie flowers, detail, Robin Atkins

I started cutting scraps of fabric to make hexie flowers on September 1, 2015. After 9 months of labor, I have just finished stitching the 733rd flower!  I'll do the math for you... That's 5,131 hexies. They are small ones, 3/4 inch per side. The finished flowers measure just under 4" in diameter.

44 hexie flowers, Robin Atkins

To give you an idea, this is what 44 hexie flowers look like. In case you don't know, for each hexie, the fabric is cut, and then basted over a paper, hexagon-shaped form. The hexies are then hand-stitched together to make the flowers. It takes about 1 hour to make one hexie flower, start-to-finish; thus 44 hours to make the batch above. Click the photo to see better detail of this process, which is called English paper piecing.


733 hexie flowers, Robin Atkins
And here are all 733 hexie flowers! Each flower is a different fabric. Although a few of the flower petal fabrics were also used for flower centers, I'm certain that there are over 1,000 different fabrics used in these flowers.

What's next? Well, I'm going to build a design wall using sound-proofing foam-board covered with a king-sized flannel sheet. I haven't quite figured out how to make it yet.

When the design wall is ready, I'll get out my hexie flowers and start to "paint" with them. Who knows what will emerge? Not me. I only have a vague idea that I might want to try "painting" an abstract view of our island shoreline.

When the "painting" process is finished, I'll stitch the flowers together in small groups, and then stitch the groups together. The result, hopefully in my lifetime, will be a queen-sized, non-traditional style, hexie quilt!

Thanks to everybody who shared scraps of fabric for me to use!

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For those interested, here is a link to a "time study" and photos of my previous hexie quilt, Mama's Garden!

11 comments:

  1. Cool I can't wait to hear more on the quilt and the wall thingie as I need one to....am also working on hexie pieces.

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    1. Thanks for the encouragement, Jody... I'll post about the design wall in a few weeks. What size pieces are you working on?

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  2. Wow that's amazing. All those different colours will make a fantastic abstract picture. You've put so many hours work in to get this far I can't wait to see progress reports.

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    1. Thanks, Gillian... I'll try to keep posting about it!

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  3. I can hardly wait to see what transpires with all of these great hexie flowers. What a LOT of work.

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    1. Thanks, Lorraine! It IS a lot of work, but with the help of many, many audio books, the time passes easily.

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  4. Even stacked the flowers are soooo beautiful. They will be a feast for the eyes when combined into a "painting". You are lucky to have a wall space sufficient for a design board that size! Have fun!

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    1. Thanks, Sabine! Yes, I am lucky to have a large room for the studio, and things I can lean the design board against with space to back away from it. Very lucky!

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  5. Amazing as always, can't wait to see what you design!

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  6. Ha! I was just thinking about you this morning, and wondering how the hexie project was going, and here you are, with a post all about it. How terrific, and how gorgeous that quilt is going to be. I can hardly wait.

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Thanks you for joining the discussion on this post today!