Fakie Hexies

I suspect that a “fakie-hexie” is some sort of snowboarding move, but since this is clearly NOT a sports related blog I’m not worried about misleading anyone when I say I’m doing a tutorial on fakie-hexies.

The hexagon craze has taken the modern quilting world by storm. They’re everywhere. Look for a minute on flickr and you can spot plenty of hexagons – on quilts, throws, burp cloths, pillows, aprons, in little stacks waiting to be added to a project….

I’ll just say right up front that I don’t have the patience to sit and make such little bitty things. That would just about drive me nuts. However, I like the look of them. A few months ago I spotted a quilt made from fakie hexagons and I realized that would be my solution. I can’t even remember where I saw the quilt (I’m thinking it was my local quilt shop, or mabye JoAnns. I was out and about somewhere…) so I have no idea who to credit for this idea. I do acknowledge that this is not my original idea. Now that I have made my own fakie-hexie quilt, I have had questions about it’s construction so I thought I would do a mini-tutorial to explain.

First a little about fabric requirements:

This quilt has a finished size of 45”x58”. The finished quilt contains 176 hexagons. You’ll need 1/3 yard of 11 different fabrics or 176 charm squares. From each 1/3 yard, cut 16 5” squares.

Then I cut the squares in half (so now I had 2.5” by 5” rectangles)

Stack the rectangles (I did two at a time, and I suggest doing no more than 4 at a time – for accuracy reasons)

Now you’re ready to arrange the pieces into hexagons.

You’ll be assembling this in long vertical columns so keep that in mind when you’re placing pieces. (This next photo shows one isolated column, just to help you see more clearly how the top is assembled)

Time to piece! (Use a 1/4 inch seam) Work with one column at a time to help keep thing organized. When you’re piecing two blocks together, you want to line them up like this:

with a very scant 1/4 inch tip overlapping on each side. It may feel wrong at first, but if you do that then your blocks will line up nicely like so:

Continue assembling the blocks until you complete a column. Press all seams in one direction. For the next column, press seams in the opposite direction. (This will help your seams to nest beautifully in the next step)

As I completed and pressed each column, I laid it out on the floor to help keep everything in order. It’s coming together! This part of the process is always so satisfying.

Now it’s time to sew the columns together. As you sew, take the time to make sure each seams nests together like this:

Taking time to match up those seams will insure pretty points and matching seams: (totally worth it!)

Once all columns are sewn together, press seams open.

Now your quilt top is assembled! At this point you can trim off the points along the top and bottom so you have a nice straight edge. (I did that step after the quilting was done so I could trim up the backing, batting and top all at the same time.)

Let me know if you have any questions, and if you make a fakie-hexie quilt let me know. I would love to see what this would look like with other fabrics!