Many, many, many years ago I fell in love with hexagons.  I, at one time, decided that it would be a good idea to make an english flower garden quilt.  Like the square quilt project that I began years ago, but just finished, this quilt top has been pieced together several different ways.

I can tell that some of this one was put together by hand, and by a couple of different machines.  Several years ago, I discovered, that in order to complete a hexagon quilt, I would need to use “Y” seams.  When I first began this quilt, I obviously did not know what that meant.  I can also see that my seam allowances are not a consistent quarter inch.  This has proven to be quite difficult and as a result has created many puckers at the seams.  This is a quilt that will not lay flat and I am ok with that.  I am just trying to finish old projects that I began long before I knew or cared what I was doing.  Once these projects are done, I can move on to more exciting quilts, and do them the correct way.

The backing I choose for this quilt looks vintage to me.  I tried to find something that would have the same look and feel as all of the old fabrics in the quilt top.  At first, I thought that I wanted something bright and bold, but when I was standing amidst all the choices at Craft Warehouse nothing jumped out at me.  I finally settled on a more neutral selection.

Machine quilting this project has been both easier and more difficult than some of my past projects.  It is easier to machine quilt, because I built a stand out of PVC pipe to help suspend the quilt.  Thus making it weightless.  It does make machine free motion quilting a lot easier.  However, because there is so much puckering due to how this quilt was originally pieced together, it is not as smooth sailing as I had wished.  Also the backing fabric seems to be a bit stiff.  However, after free motion quilting this project, I decided that it was difficult due to the universal 80/12 needle that I was using.

I changed my needle to a 90/14 Quilting needle to do the binding.  The blanket stitch that I used for the binding and the new needle was a much better combination.  The needle just slid smoothly into the fabric layers.  Hind sight being what it is, I now should have used this quilting needle instead to free motion quilt.  On my next project I will use a specific quilting needle.

I am really glad that I have finished this quilt.  Now I am going to work on my Christmas quilt and get the stippling done!

Vintage Hexagon Quilt Specifics:

• Finished Size: 50 ” x  54 “
• Hexagon quilt top features scraps handed down from family years and years ago
• Backing fabric is:  “Lauren” by Paintbrush Studio
• Thread used to finish piecing is Gutermann 100% poly 50wt cream
• Machine Quilted with Aurifil 50wt white 100 % cotton
• For the binding, I used a blanket stitch and the same thread that I quilted with.  I also just wrapped the backing over to the front to serve as the binding.