1,999 Hexagons

I almost can't believe this is true... My Rainbow Hexie quilt top is finished! Can you guess how many hexagons are in it (hint, I may have given it away in the post title)?

I've been working on it since November 2016, so that's 8 years! You can see my first post about it here. I did take a break from it through 2020 and most of 2021, when I worked on my temperature quilt instead.

This has been my travel project, accompanying me on a lot of trips all over Newfoundland, to Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta, and Massachusetts. For most of those trips, I made sure my stitching was packed before I worried about packing my clothes! Thankfully, Paul would rather drive than be passenger, so he drives and I stitch. I've worked on it while waiting for services to start at our provincial women's ministries conference, and on the sidelines of Zachary's and Nathan's sports tournaments, on airplanes, and in airports, hotels, and Airbnbs. I've also worked on it at home, of course, and it has been a featured project in all of the WIPS-B-GONE challenges I've hosted.

I wouldn't even be able to try to guess how many hours have gone into it. We'll just say a lot! I can tell you there are 1,999 1" hexagons (meaning each side of the hexagon measures 1"), and the finished quilt top measures 63" x 78". The original layout (see it in this post) had the rainbow offset and was slightly smaller. It would have required 1,161 hexies. When it came time to do the purple ring, I decided to center the rainbow and add black all around to frame it, which added the extra 838 hexies. Of course, with 1,999 hexies, I feel like it needs one more! I think I'll applique one to the back after the quilting and binding.

Because I needed so many for the background, I've bought quarter yard cuts of quite a few black or black and white fabrics in order to get a good variety of prints. The center flower of black hexies looks so cute.

For the other colours, though, I used whatever was in my stash and scraps, along with some that were given to me by friends. As with any scrap quilt, it's fun to look at all the different prints. I love these jack-o-lanterns! There are three of them scattered around the orange ring.

And I bought this blue with white flowers to make myself a skirt years ago. Quilting cotton doesn't always work well for clothes, but this was a circle skirt, so the cut of it kept it nice and flowy.

I love looking at the back, too!

As I've been getting close to the finish the past few months, I've been thinking about how I want to quilt it, and I've decided I want to do big stitch hand quilting. That means I'll get to spend a lot more hours working on it before it's a true finish. I'm quite happy with that, to be honest. I ordered the Aurifil 12 wt colours I needed to supplement the ones I had on hand, and they arrived today. Now I just need to get it basted so I can start the quilting!

In case you're worried that I now have no travel project, let me set your mind at rest 😂 I have another EPP project that has been waiting for attention, though for this one all the EPP is finished and I'm attaching the stars to their backgrounds. In fact, I apparently abandoned those stars in favour of the Hexie Rainbow, as they were started back in 2014, but had to be put in time out when I wasn't happy with the way it was going. Then I came up with the current plan for them, but the hexies had already taken over. I've picked up the stars off and on over the years, and now only need to add a few more to their background squares before the hand stitching part will be finished.

You might say attaching a few stars to their backgrounds doesn't sound like much, and you'd be right. It takes about 45 minutes to stitch one star to its background, so it's only a few hours of stitching left to go. It's okay, though, because I have a plan for a brand new EPP project. Of course I do! I may have also already stitched a test sample and be itching to really get going on it. You can be sure I'll share about it soon!

For now, I'm excited to have my Hexie Rainbow quilt top finished, and I'm looking forward to starting the big stitch hand quilting. I used to hand quilt all my quilts, but I've never done the big stitch version. The question is, can I finish the quilting before this is a 10 year project? I have two years...