My name is Anne-Marie and I'm addicted to patchwork hexagons

I do love a patchwork project when I find the time. I especially enjoy English paper piecing as you can get really precise joins all sewn by hand so you can do in front of the telly without annoying your other half with your sewing machine blaring away. See, I'm being thoughtful of others (sort of, if you ignore all the bits of fabric and thread strewn about the place).

I am particularly obsessed with hexagons. I don't know why they're so appealing, but ever since I discovered the English paper piecing technique for patchwork, I've become a hexaholic. If more proof were ever needed, I present to you the hexagon quilt!

Please excuse the terrible photography, but you get the idea.

The hexagon quilt started off life as hundreds (maybe thousands, I never counted them) of little, individual paper hexagons which I covered in fabric:

These were then all hand-sewn to each other like this:

And they were all sewn to each other with a little white path between each one.

This design is a grandmother's flower garden, although mine is quite a funky one.

Once I'd finished hand sewing all the hexagons together, I had to quilt the whole thing. I had planned on doing this by machine, however my sewing machine is really not set up for quilting and it couldn't handle the thick wadding I used (clever me). So I ended up hand-quilting the entire thing along the white paths, which took For.Ev.Er.

Once all the quilting was complete, I machine sewed the binding on the front side, and hand sewed the binding on the back side by stitching in the ditch. Also seemed to take forever! I am a lot more enamoured with the patch working than I am with the quilting.

More hexagons...

So there we have it. This quilt took ca. 13 months to complete from start to finish, although I did do several other projects during this time, as well as moving house, doing tons of DIY, changing jobs, relearning how to drive. So a normal person could probably finish it sooner. I really enjoyed sewing all those hexagons together, but I am relieved it is finally finished. And it's being given to a special friend of mine, who I hope will get plenty enjoyment out of it too.

If you're interested in going hexagon mad (and how could you not be!?) then I highly recommend the following tutorial from Cintia at My Poppet. I found it easy to follow and pretty to look at. What more could you want? 

PS, I only meant to make a table runner at first, and it went and turned into a double quilt. Like I mentioned, hexagons are addictive. You've been warned.