The Garden Path

Hexagons are fun and easy to make but once you have a pile of them it is time to start thinking about how you will put them together and this requires some thought and planning. I like to design a road map or plan about how they will go together. There are many places where you can get free design sheets. There is a wide variety available at Paper Piece; a plain hexagon design sheet is available here.

The most familiar method of putting hexagon motifs together is with a “path” between the flower (or diamond) motifs.

 

 

Think of the path as sashing. Many make the mistake of surrounding each flower or diamond motif with the path fabric only to find that the motifs don't fit together with a single path. When you use a sashing with square blocks, there is one sash between two blocks and the same is true with hexagons motifs; there will be one path between two flower or diamond motifs. The following picture shows double flower motifs with a single path.

 

 

Hexagons can be sewn directly to one another without a path but this does present some challenges.

Single flowers

Double flowers

When sewn directly to another a slope begins to develop. If you are working out the design on a square sheet of paper it feels like a serious problem but this can be resolved with a few filler pieces and my tilting the design sheet.

Double flowers with design sheet shifted

The problem is that some filler pieces will need to be constructed to fill the spaces on the sides. I made a quilt which I call Ausiegons. It was inspired by an antique hexagon quilt in Australia. I’ll write about this quilt and pictures of my quilt another time however for today I want to show you that by using filler pieces on the outside edge it is possible to have a quilt with edges that are not sloped.

 

 

Another option for assembling the hexagon motifs that doesn't involve a path is to use filler hexagons. In the diagram below I've use pink fillers around the centre and then blue for the next round of fillers.

 

 

So there you have it!  A few ideas for putting it all together! I hope that the creative juices are flowing. I'll leave you with a picture of a real garden path...mine!

Until I post again, happy sewing!