Spring is sprung, the grass is riz....

I wonder where the flowers is?

Trust me....the background crabapple tree blooms in late May! We are not there yet, but I sure do miss the flowers! Hexies that is!

My hexie box is near empty! Time to fill it up again for evening stitching!

I started with a photocopied sheet of hexies. Free on the internet. I then took 5 sheets of plain white freezer paper {I found this was the max that is easier to cut without hurting your hand)

I then cut strips off my photocopied page and attach it to a strip of the wax paper -- remember nothing is pre-measured. Just chop a width off your freezer paper - remember, 5 sheets thick. You then place a staple through these layers in the middle of each hexie.

When you have a whole batch, start cutting along the line. This is where the # of layers are important. With more layers, your cuts can be off, even by a fraction is enough that you don't get nice matching petals when you whip stitch them together. Some people at this point will put a hole punch in the center of each hexie to make removal easier. For me, it wasn't a big deal at the end to remove the paper. It came out easily enough!

Remove the staple, discard the paper piece, unless you want to use that piece and glue onto your strip of fabric. I don't use this piece because then I would have to take out my glue and glue each piece onto the fabric. Make sure that you have shiny side down onto the wrong side of the fabric. Remember you want to be able to adhere the waxy side to your 2.5" strip, or scrap, or whatever you are using. I find 2.5 strips easy to manage and store in my hexie box.

Then place each of the hexies along your strip and press down on the paper side so the hexie adheres to the fabric.

This is the important part Morgan -- do not be in a hurry or you will slice your finger off! LOL... I do not use a ruler, I just trim enough to leave about 1/4 of an inch all around the hexie. I am using my small rotary cutter as you can see.

This is what it looks like. I tend to cut a hundred or so of these and then spend my next hexie day as a "glue" day. 

I have tried all types of glue. You name it, I bought it -- but the cheapest is Elmer's stick glue. It washes out very easily and lasts a long time. It is also easy on the budget. It's up to you, but make sure that it is washable as you don't want the residue of the glue to gum up and when it comes to quilting time, or removal time, you don't want the wax paper hexies stuck on there! You can see that I am focusing the glue on the fabric, rather than the paper.

Use your fingers to press down the edges to the paper side of the hexies - remember the wax side has adhered to the wrong side of the fabric.

Make sure you do the corner as well.

You can see the I am getting some glue on my finger as well! No worries! it washes off! I want to make sure that I have the whole edge of that fabric so it will stick where it needs to! I've even glued hexies in the car while travelling through Portugal! This is the easiest step where you really don't need to watch too carefully! I also have a couple of those wet-naps in my kit so I can clean the glue off my fingers!

Closer picture so you can see some edges are narrower than the others  It's ok if they are a bit narrower and a bit wider! It will all work out when you start stitching! You can see the corners are nice and tight. Excuse the lack of manicure! 

This hexie is ready to go!

These were the different glues that I used. The ONLY difference is all three of these are about 3-4 dollars MORE than Elmers. You pick!

Fuzzy pile of hexies!

Voila! After sticking all of them together. Once the whole quilt top is together, then I start picking out the papers.

So my dearest Morgan -- now that you know how to hand-stitch! Guess you know how to put these together! No worries! I am STILL working on this one for you!


Happy Quilting everyone! What are you doing today?