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,
My Half Inch Hexagon Ispy Quilt has been 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 diamons finished I then had the task of trying to work out what to do inbetween 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…