How to Make the Hexi Honeycomb Quilt | a Shabby Fabrics Tutorial

[Music] hi it's jen from shabby fabrics i have a fun project for you today showcasing one of moda's newest pre-cuts and these are called honeycomb and i'm just loving this new pre-cut that makes what used to be traditional english paper piecing so fast and fun this is a free download for you we have a limited amount of kits this is just i can't wait to show you how fun and easy this is so go ahead and download the hexi honeycomb quilts where we show you how to take these amazing pre-cuts and turn this into a fun project and i can just see this in a sun room just a room where you want to bring maybe some fun and joy into that room so let's dive right in our kit will include of course the white background the beautiful blue stripe binding your package of the honeycomb in the shine on collection and then if you notice the center of our flowers that's a moda bella solid fabric we went ahead and cut those out for you as well so you literally don't have to cut any of these hexis on your own what we also did was come up with a really cool uh type of paper it's actually a heavy-duty freezer paper that we'll be turning our edges over that means these are going to come together in no time traditional english paper piecing involved pieces of paper that you would fold the edges over and literally do a basting stitch too on this on the top and all the way through the paper sew those together by hand the flower and then we remove those stitches that were basically holding the papers in place it was a very cumbersome project i did one years ago and i thought i don't think i ever want to do that again so now this is a much faster approach so let's dive in okay the product that has made this so much faster let me show you if you just had regular this is just a piece of paper it's a little bit heavier than like drawing paper it's a lighter weight um just kind of cover stock how you would do that if you wanted to do it that way those papers are readily available in the market today by the way the hexy honeycombs are one and a half inches on the side so that's how they're kind of measured is one and a half inches some people like one and a quarter inch papers leaving a very scant quarter to turn over the edge i prefer one and an eighth which is what we've cut ours to but let's say that you're not going to be using the super cool freezer paper uh hexis that we've cut out and you're just going to use a standard paper that has no adhesive to it whatsoever you would simply put a dab in place and begin to just put glue on and turn those edges over and that is how i did another version of english paper piecing a couple of years ago where i would just kept putting on stripes of glue and ironing as we went along using a lot of glue sometimes i would take a couple glue pens or a refill to do a small wall hanging and it was just a little bit messy sometimes so what's even better this will definitely work but what i think is even better and is my new favorite technique is these are made here at shabby fabrics the one side is plain the other side has a freezer paper to it that you can use again and again you have a choice i'm going to show you your choice could be shiny side down where i simply iron that down just like that and it's in place it's not going anywhere but again i would be going back into my glue stick because this side has no stick to it and i'd have to put my stripe of glue down again and fold that edge over well how about we take it to the next level how about instead of doing it that way we flip this over and we have the shiny side up what that does for us is just put that glue pen away because you're not going to be needing it at all so what we will be doing instead and this is the way that i did this quilt here is go ahead and put the shiny side up fold that edge over and we're just going to be ironing onto our fabric now you kind of want to avoid the freezer paper because it will melt with your iron it's not the end of the world we don't want to get any residue on the iron i've definitely done that it was not a big deal it did not leave a big mess on my iron whatsoever but still just to be able to keep moving i i prefer to iron try to just be definitely putting the tip of the iron on the fabric only to avoid the freezer paper now once you have that done can you believe how fast that is that's amazing once that's done i want to flip that over and iron it just one more time now if i flip this over onto my wool pressing mat while this will release off of there here i'll show it to you i'll go ahead and iron that right into my pressing mat freezer paper has an adhesive characteristic but it's temporary you can take it off and put it down again and again but as i take it off i grab just a little bit i don't know if you can see that with the overhead camera i got just a little bit of my wool pressing mat on there not a big deal but if you if you don't want to have that concern just put down this is the fonzen porter applique pressing sheet just put that down and it will just quickly real it doesn't even adhere to it so that's another idea for you so while that's cooling down i'm going to go ahead and move on to another one i recommend you use do two at a time and let that one cool all the way so we have shiny side up and again just visually centering that over the over the edge it comes now i'm working with the aliso iron um not my you know i'm usually working with a bigger iron but i love how compact and i love how i can easily see that edge so i can stay away from my freezer paper here's the great thing once you buy a pack of these templates there's 72 included you can use them again and again and again i have taken freezer paper in and out of projects and use it up to you know 12 times so you're going to be able to do absolutely the full quilt with one package and probably be able to do that quilt multiple times with one package before you need to replace that it's just kind of lost its stick okay once that's done i'll just go ahead and bring my pressing sheet back ironing that down now releasing that hey we found a clover notion that we've used on a lot of different projects and we found a new reason for this amazing tool so with this you know i'm usually using this end like when i do my folded star hot pads if you've seen that video i like to use this tip but now this one really shines because i just get in underneath here and i just release that and each time that you use your freezer papers though they'll release even just a little bit a little bit easier because they've been used before now just easily take that out so all you have to do fold that back with your fingers flip it upside down just like that fold it right back up the way that it came and we'll just put our iron there now while that's just pressing those down i'm just going to once again go in there with this tool releasing that isn't that incredible and if you have yep i just slide that underneath there it's amazing how that i don't think was ever intended to be used that way but it works beautifully okay so i'm just folding that back down and folding that under and you can see how you can prepare your hexis in no time and it's fun because before when i did my first english paper piecing i mean that cool took me months and it was very it was it got a little tiring having to baste everything to my papers and then just whip stitch ever so slightly in between and then seam ripping out the running stitches this is so much more fun and the speed is unreal so you'll continue to go ahead every single flower has six petals around it with a yellow in the center once those are prepared that's when you'll bring your background fabric and you'll be cutting those squares to eight and a half now by the way i just noticed the sizing one thing that you might want to do and i definitely did that with my hexis is is just give a little bit of a of the sizing because it helps it hold its shape once you fold that over you don't have to worry that they're already pre-cut and that they might shrink up just a touch plenty of space because as you can see here even if your hexi went from one and a half to slightly smaller it doesn't really matter because you're going to be turning those edges around this shape so it's okay to go ahead and use a little bit of sizing and it really helps it hold that nice rigid edge which is what we're after all right back to what we're saying we get our background fabric and i love my creative grid eight and a half inch ruler it just helps me be able to get my fabric and go ahead and cut that out you could certainly use a conventional eight and a half inch ruler as well that'd be another great option the eight and a half by twenty four and a half inch creative grid which i don't have with me here today i wanted to make my space be all about this and being able to work in a more contact compact space this is a great ruler plus if you're going to be working at any projects that have blocks that will be squaring up to eight and a half this is the ruler for you so once you have that your backgrounds are all cut out we want to find that center that's very important we find a really good center and we'll go ahead and fold our fabric to find that center and you want to be consistent about doing that because we want to make sure that our flower our flower our hexi flower is perfectly centered so as i look at this here and i'll bring these others out that i've prepared ahead of time you put that to the side looks like we got one extra there start with your center so everything will be built on that and of course you can see this line makes it very easy to line this up left to right because you're on that line now here on this one i'm just trying to make sure that line is splitting right down the middle and i have equidistant on the left as equidistant on the right if you want to be very specific you could certainly put your ruler down there and measure that if you want to i feel confident that that is right there where i want it to be this is where the roxanne's glue basta is your friend we have used the sewline glue pen before to put little bits of dabs of glue on there that works i think the roxanne's glue base that works better so if you are inclined to go ahead and use the roxanne's glue baste it which is my personal favorite notice i'm not putting gobs of glue on it's just a little bit to hold that in position i'm again getting right on oh i'm up up on my line here i lost sight of my horizontal line there we go so i'm right along that horizontal plane i'm going to scoot that a little bit to the right hey if you get if you move that like i did and there's glue up here don't worry you're going to cover that up with your other hexis no problem so once we have that centered we can really even go from the back if we want to and iron that down good and flat make sure we're happy with what we're seeing because everything's now going to be built on that so at this point you know you can be referring to your photo or do your own layout as you prefer we're just going to literally be going around and gluing everything down similarly until we've built our flowers i'll go ahead and do that and then the next step will be sewing this down to the background [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] okay look how cute that is i mean right this is so fast so quick so i'm going to go ahead and iron that from the back so i'm just going to iron this flat again and while i'm doing that our next step will be to just naturally stitch our hexis together and to the background all at the same time so how are we going to do that i've loaded a monopoly clear thread into the top of my machine and in the bobbin i've loaded something called deco bob this may be new to you it's an 80 weight thread a weight of thread is the higher the number the thinner the thread that's always confused me i finally figured that out it's just the opposite of needles so an 80 weight thread we're used to piecing with 50 weight which is what you know i used to quilt with the 80 weight is a really strong so don't be fooled it's still strong it's got a polycore wrap with cotton and we have three colors that's all you ever really need a cream of gray and a black is really anything you're ever going to sew will be perfect for that and that's meant to go in the bobbin i know there's even people that are now piecing with this but that's another story so let's just talk about what we did in a bobbin and i just put this one in here today i think it just couples up really nicely it's a little bit of a dense a less dense thread giving it kind of just softer i i don't want my thread to stand out in this case i want it to be subtle and almost invisible which is why i'm using the clear on top um okay as far as the width i've got a two uh two and a half width with a 1.3 in my length so i want that zigzag stitch go ahead and practice that on some scrap fabric our goal is to kind of hop back and forth between the two hexes to attach those together and then when we're on the outside of the hexi we're just on the background and on the hexi on the background the hexi i will start going around the center first working my way around here and once i come back i'll track down one of the lanes let me move my head out of the way i'll start here track here come around here and then up there and stop i really don't want to go back over a stitch i already put in as it could become too dense i'll stop there and then start right here again where i come up that and stop and continue on so for so on and so forth okay let's get started and again i would have practiced on some scrap fabric make sure i'm happy with that make sure that tension works well for for you so i'm going to start right in one of these corners and i'll just get started i'm really looking right kind of down the middle hoping to hop back and forth looks like it's going to start just a little bit to my right and then when you get in the corner stop so if you have a needle down feature go ahead and choose that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now i'll pivot and come down this way working my way around this coming up there to stop [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'll just gently pull that out i have found when i use my thread cutter with a monopoly thread it tends to unthread my needle so i raised my needle and lifted my presser foot and so you can see we've done this part now we'll just come around here there and here stop and repeat that all the way around and look at that how cute we have it sewn down let me trim off all the threads here in the back from going all the way around it so go ahead and give your block a good press and now you'll repeat those steps with 29 more blocks until you have a total of 30 blocks and of course there's a lot of beautiful arrangements that we've got or you can mix and match and do whatever you'd like you'll also have some left over if you want to do a small additional project maybe a coordinating pillow or whatnot once you have all of your blocks prepared you can lay them out as you prefer or you can just follow the layout diagram shown on the download as you can see you'll be taking six blocks sewing them in a column using your standard quarter inch seam allowance and you'll repeat that five times notice for columns one three and five we added a two and a half inch by eight and a half inch spacer block at the top of those columns and then for columns two and four we added that spatial block at the bottom that helps offset the rows just so that they're more attractive once that's done you'll have your five columns go ahead and sew those together of course with a standard quarter inch seam allowance then you'll go ahead and add your side borders followed by the top and bottom borders go ahead and have the project quilted or quilt that yourself and then you'll add the beautiful blue and white striped binding to your project so you can see that it's fun to be able to use the honeycomb from moda we love this new pre-cut and of course the freezer paper papers that you'll be turning the edges over make this project come together so quickly and of course this was our savior for getting those papers out and make them you know whole so that we can use them again and again so thank you so much for letting me show you how fun and easy it is to make this adorable project i'll see you on a future shabby video

Channel: Shabby Fabrics

Views: 38,263

Rating: 4.9055119 out of 5

Keywords: quilting tutorial, sewing tutorial, hexi honeycomb, shabby fabrics, how to sew, how to quilt, make a quilt, quilting, sewing, clover notions, clover, shabby fabrics quilt, flower quilt, english paper piecing, quilt, quilt making, hexi, honeycomb, diy, diy quilt, diy quilting, flower quilting, creative grids, moda, moda fabrics

Id: f5L9aXAyMlo

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020