Half Inch Hexagon Ispy Quilt

Completing a long term sewing project feels amazing and I can’t wait to tell you a bit more about my Half Inch Hexagon Ispy Quilt that I started in January 2018.  I made a lot of time for this quilt and what has fuelled my desire to help others make progress in their craft now. 

Working on such a huge project like this made me realise the joy that I get from creating every day.  Tiny snippets of grabbed time amongst the daily, crazy life of bringing up small people around home and work life.  Getting to work on my project and making the progress made me extremely happy and what made my day.  

This is why I am encouraging you to come and join my free Facebook group – The Make Time Community – to enjoy collaborating with likeminded crafters who also enjoy the craft in their life, be inspired and keep accountable for the projects you are working on.

My Half Inch Hexagon Ispy Quilt was a magnificent quilt to work on.  Starting life as part of a sewalong that I take part in called the #focuscuttingsewalong with @naomialice.

Back in 2018 it was called the #fussycuttingsewalong and the quilt started life with a purple identifiable motif focus cut hexie flower. It grew and grew during 2018 with the border of hexie flowers for each of the 52 weeks of the sewalong. Here they all are in a quick little video.

Plotting and planning I realised a centre set of hexie flowers would look good, 26 to fit inside 52 just so happened to be the same amount of letter of the alphabet! The search for my letters came with the #kinderalphabet by @heatherrossinsta it was perfect and a certain test to my pattern matching prowess because after #focuscutting 26 #hexieflowers you kinda want to throw in the towel!! I didn’t obviously!!

The next task came with filling in the gaps. The diamonds in the middle evolved first during the summer of 2018. It felt easy to make diamonds that were scrappy looking, I quickly liked the appeal of using little motifs in each hexie.

Having young kids around I liked the playful nature of a quilt that they could use… Each half inch hexie within the white paths are unique and become the perfect ISpy Quilt.

When I started creating them I told Instagram what I was doing and that I knew it would take forever to collect the fabric for all the 1/2” hexies. My lovely insta friend Correne @sewberrysweet offered to send me some of her tiny motif scraps. I’d never considered to ask for help and she sent lots, all got cut and used and added to the #halfinchhexies inside.

After this others offered to help and from around the world tiny scraps of fabric arrived, too many to name, but you know who you are and I thank you for every single scrap!! If it was the right size it made it in, nothing was left out or wasted!!

Once I got the centre diamonds finished I then had the task of trying to work out what to do in-between the hexie flowers. Knowing I had to try and quilt it someday I liked the idea of using and quilting the white paths I had created so far.

After a bit of fiddling and thought I settled on some triangles with a little corner stone jewel made out of white hexagons. It made it easier to work on sections at a time too. I’m still amazed I managed to have so many individual motifs on the Ispy element of my half Inch hexagons!

It took ages and by the time I had completed the outer border my next thought lay in the final border of my Half Inch Hexagon Ispy Quilt.

I’d never planned for a bigger border but a crazy idea of a rainbow sat well with me and still having all the scraps left over from the identifiable motifs in the I Spy section I decided to continue using them to make a scrappy looking rainbow. It was totally worth the extra effort!

Once the top was complete then the task of quilting it came. It is my first quilt pieced this way and knowing it specialness I decided to hand quilt it. I know from my first ever quilt that hand quilting can take ages but this quilt deserved the extra attention.

It took a good year and a half to hand quilt it with little fits and bursts from me. A true pleasure to sit under a quilt with a needle and thread, working away on an evening, daytime, lunchtime, morning! Whenever I could muster up the desire to quilt it and when I was without the children!

All the tiny stitches were totally worth my effort. My Half Inch Hexagon Ispy Quilt is so tactile to touch. Every time I look at it I see something new. Memories of friendships and quilting love. I adore it.

This is a real heirloom quilt and one that I couldn’t have done without the Instagram community and I want to send each and everyone of you are great big THANK YOU to all of you for the moral support along the way.

I hope you like the story of the Half Inch Hexagon Ispy Quilt. Now it’s time to get on with the next one… The Beaufort Quilt!

It now being a couple of years since I put this project to bed and on bed, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on how we use it and what it means to me…

Well, this kids surprise me constantly.  When the quilt is out and about in the house it’s the first thing they grab to cuddle with.  I am always really nervous when they want to use it and snacks are out but I try and not let it get to me.  

The thing they want to do most though is play I-spy with me.  With so many different images on it they like to look for their favourites and play games.  At the moment my littlest likes to look for colours but my eldest wants to use his letters.  It’s really sweet and makes me smile.  A lot!

If you like this kind of project and allowing yourself the time to work on your craft, then I would love for you to come and visit us in the Make Time Community.  It’ll be nice to connect with you again!

Karen x