Monday, September 21, 2015

Halloween Hexi Gems Modern Wall Hanging

Missouri Star Quilt Company just keeps putting out great new YouTube Tutorials! This past weekend I took the time to use the Hexi Gems tutorial to make my first "modern" quilt, and I did it Halloween themed. 

The original quilt featured in MSQC's tutorial was done with an all white background. White isn't going to stay white in my house, so I wanted to do black, and utilize fabrics and notions from my stash to make this a Halloween Wall Hanging. 

To create the quilt I cut 16, 10 inch by 10 inch black background squares. Then I cut out half hexagons in different Halloween fabrics, my main scheme was purples, greens, oranges, and black fabrics. Over the past two years I've made some really fun Halloween quilts and each of those had left over fabrics, so creating this quilt directly from my stash was actually pretty easy. I almost didn't have enough backing fabric, but by piecing three fabrics together I was able to make the backing fit perfectly and also be able to wrap it forward to create the binding for the quilt. 

Here are two photos of the quilt making process:

My original plan was to do a 3 by 4 layout, once I started laying out my half hexi's
though I soon realized a 4 by 4 layout would work best. 
When I worked on my layout I forgot that I would need to put Heat N Bond Light on the back of each Hexi to applique it to the background square. It took me two hours to get my pieces cut and my layout determined. Once I got to this point I pinned my Hexi's to the background squares and packed up all the squares to move to the ironing board.

The completed quilt came together pretty quickly. After I adhered each half hexi to the background square using Heat N Bond I then pieced the quilt top together. After the quilt top was pieced I created my quilt sandwich and spray basted it together. I then appliqued the half hexi's by using the quilt-as-you-go method. 

The finished quilt was 40 inches by 40 inches. 

Here are photos of the finished quilt:

Front:



Back:



After completing the quilt and photographing it I posted it to Instagram where MSQC then reposted and shared to their 17,000 followers! 



So proud of this quilt, especially being my first "modern" style quilt, and having completed it all with materials from my stash!