Joining a Hexagon Quilt
A hexagon quilt is made up of many small hexagonal pieces of fabric that are joined at their sides. This technique is one of the oldest patchwork patterns, dating back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. It is also called English paper piecing. American quilters took to it with a passion during the Great Depression, when they worked out a "set" for a hexagon quilt called "Grandmother's Flower Garden."
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The Traditional Way of Joining
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Makers of hexagonal quilts for many years used a method called English paper piecing. This method still works, and it's common among quilters who enjoy hand sewing. The work is portable and can be done while waiting in offices and so on. To use this method, the quilter cuts out a paper hexagonal template from any waste paper. In the past, old letters were even used. She cuts out a piece of fabric large enough that the raw edges can be folded under the template. Then she bastes these raw edges down. When there are seven of these, she can begin joining them at the edges with sewing thread, without sewing through the paper. In the old days, the paper template was left inside the quilt. The basting was removed later.
Grandmother's Flower Garden
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In the 1930s, American quilters began using a different set from the random "charm quilt" set that English piecers used. This new set made the stitched-together hexagons look like flowers blooming. It required a bit more coordination of colors than the random crazy quilt set used before: you had to have 12 hexagons from color A, six of color B and one of color C to make one flower. Also, you need a border of 18 white hexagons around each flower. The hexagons can be joined as above, or they can be joined in strips vertically before the strips are joined horizontally.
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Joining by Machine
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Kaye Wood has worked out a way to piece the hexagons by machine. She advises quilters to sew first every other hexagon to the center hexagon, all the way across the seam. Then, the sewer inserts the other hexagrams in, but she never sews over the previous seam. The sewer backstitches at the previous seam, for perfect corners that will hold firmly enough.
The Faux Hexagon Joining Method
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Nancy Zieman has further simplified the process of piecing hexagonal-looking quilts by machine. Rather than cutting individual hexagons and then piecing them laboriously by machine, she recommends cutting half hexagons. The quilter then sews these half hexagons together on their angled sides, in strips. When the strips are joined, the seam down the middle of the hexagon disappears visually, and the quilt looks as if it has been carefully pieced one hexagon at a time. This is a much faster method of piecing, and Nancy Zieman has made some very large faux hexagons, so that the quilt looks like one big flower.
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References
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