Nah, not really. I got it done the day before her birthday which was cutting it a bit fine to be honest.
Anyway, I started off buying random fat quarters. I didn't want it to look like a rainbow so I didn't get any red or green. Just pink, purple, blue, orange and yellows.
I found a template for some 3 inch hexagon shapes online and printed them out and cut them out of thick cardboard. Then I cut my fat quarters into 4 inch squares and started sewing them around the hexagon shapes.
As you can see, I've already collected a lot of threads from the fabric and they're stuck all over the carpet.
Then I had to decide how to put all the hexagons together. First I was going to do all random colours but then I decided to do flower shapes. So I laid a couple out on the floor and this was when I realised: EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE HAND SEWN. That is also when I almost died of shock.
So I ended up making the quilt a lot smaller than I originally intended because I knew I would never finish it in time.
If you're going to spend hours sewing you may as well put a face mask on and dye your eyelashes at the same time.
The cat from downstairs decided she would help me buy lying on top of all my hexagons. She also wiped her muddy feet all over what I'd done.
And had a go at the cockatoos. As you do.
This is a blurry shot of the back after it's been stitched together:
Eventually I made the quilt large enough that I thought I'd stick the batting and the backing fabric on. So I laid it all out on the table and pinned the layers together with safety pins. This worked super well and I didn't have to stitch it at all. It all worked perfectly. I'm totally doing this again.
Then I had to decide how to quilt it all. So I thought seeing as I have flowers happening, maybe I'll stitch petals on the flowers. So that's what I ended up doing. Unfortunately I'm not very good at quilting and the back of my quilt leaves a lot to be desired but who cares??? She'll be right.
When I finished doing most of that I thought I might as well use the leftover backing fabric to do the edges of the quilt. I didn't have enough! I almost died of shock again. So I googled lots of websites and found this tutorial:
http://badskirt.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/tutorial-finishing-you-hexie-quilts.html
So I then made another 61 bloody hexagons and sewed them together and onto the quilt and then onto the back of the quilt and I swear my hands nearly fell off.
And that is the finished product.
I also did a little purple hexagon (as you can see in the photo above) with mum's initials and my initials and the year on it.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MA!!!!!!!!!!
