Holiday Hexies

I'm so excited to finally share what I made with some of my hexies that I made last week. I made a holiday wall hanging!

I just love how this turned out and it was a fast project too. Well, fast for me, which was about 2 weeks. It measures 19" x 25" and I used all scrap fabrics. As I'd mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not really a fan of hand sewing but I still think the hexies are cute. After seeing this on Pinterest, I knew immediately that I wanted to make a Christmas tree using hexies. Here's how I made it.

After making the hexies for my tree, I rummaged through my stash to find some white fabric, a large scrap of batting, and some backing fabric. I basted it just around the edges using safety pins, determined where I wanted to tree to be and laid out my hexies. As usual, my assistant Oliver was close at hand to made suggestions.

After I decided on a layout that I liked it was time to secure them temporarily to my quilt top. I just used a dab of glue to keep them in place. Once they were all glued, I then finished basting around the tree.

Now it was time to start quilting. I just did straight line quilting for the hexies, just like in the project I found through Pinterest. After that was done, I stitch appliquéd a little square for the tree trunk.

 For the background, I liked the idea of snowballs at the base and gradually changing to swirls as I moved upward. My favorite thread for quilting is Isacord but what I had on hand was more of a cream color. Plus, I wasn't sure I'd have enough so I opted to use white Aurifil thread instead. I've never quilted with it before, only pieced. It wasn't bad but I think that poly threads (like Isacord) just glide more smoothly for free motion quilting, especially where you have to backtrack a lot (like pebbles). I chose a modern looking font for the Seasons Greetings saying and used a dark red poly thread to outline and paint it. Once again, I used my trusty Press'n Seal to copy the lettering from paper and then sew over it once I placed it on my quilt top.

(Sorry for the less-than-stellar phone picture)

This was probably the most time consuming part of this project. Since the plastic was on top, I couldn't bury my threads as I went along. I had to trace (free motion quilt) all the letters first, carefully rip away all the plastic, and then bury all of the threads. Once that was done, it was time to start thread painting. Not sure if that's the technical term for it but it sounds better than saying "next I quilted little mini hairballs all over the letters." I might go back over a few of the letters (SEAS in seasons) since they aren't as dark as the others. Here's the finished lettering:

When I showed it to my son, he immediately said that we need to get out the train to put under the tree. He's 4 and doesn't exactly have a great sense of calendar time and can't wait for it to be Christmas again so that we can put up our tree and set up our Lego train set around it. It got me thinking that maybe I should add a few gifts under the tree. It'd be easy to appliqué a few even after it's been quilted. So there you have it. A cute little wall hanging for the holidays using hexies.

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In addition to the usual link parties (found here), I'm also linking up to Ho-Ho-Ho...And On We Sew over at Missy Mac Creations, Amy's Free Motion Quilting Adventures, and Free Motion Mavericks at Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing.