Sew BitterSweet Designs – Hexie Rainbow Pillow

This post is part of the A Season by Hand series. Find the schedule here.
Full details on sponsors and prizes here.

—–

a season by hand

Our guest today is Melissa at Sew BitterSweet Designs.  Melissa is one of the co-hosts of A Lovely Year of Finishes, an accountability linky {with prizes} that encourages us to finish one project a month! Melissa also shares a bunch of tutorials on her blog, especially for quilt blocks, you can check them out here. Today she’s sharing a fun project for some hexagons, so enjoy!

—–

Hi everyone! My name is Melissa and I blog at Sew BitterSweet Designs. My blog is named after my daughter, her full name means Bitterly Gracious and I take that to mean BitterSweet. I have been quilting since I was a in college and got into designing about 3 years ago when my daughter was a baby and my husband was on his first deployment. During the tail end of this last deployment I discovered hexagons and fell in love, though obsessed is probably a better way to describe it actually! Here are all the hexies I’ve made over the last 6 months (minus about 60 for projects, including the one I am sharing today).

Hexie Stash

Truth be told there are about 1400 hexies here. Some are for a special project that I’m still collecting for and some will be for an eventual rainbow hexie stash buster quilt.

For a Season By Hand, I knew immediately that I would do a linen pillow. I bought some Essex Linen in Steel when I was visiting my parents in California over Christmas right as I was learning how to make hexagons and knew it would be for a pillow some day. The more hexagons I made the more my 3 year old, Anne, fell in love with them, needless to say, my first big hexie project was destined to be hers, and from this face…I think she loves it.

Anne Approved

I started playing with layouts for a rainbow designs during breakfast one morning in May and she chose the bottom right one as her favorite.

Hexie Layouts

Next came the sewing. I hand stitched the rows together, then evenly spaced them on the linen, machine stitched them down with color matching thread, and then hand quilted each row. The hand quilting took the longest, on the upside I got to watch a whole lot of Cupcake Wars during nap times while I stitched. After it was all stitched up it was simply a matter of finding the right sized pillow form (27″ x 27″). It is now Anne’s new floor pillow and my third finished hexie project!

Rainbow Hexie Pillow

I had so much fun making this pillow, working with my 3 year old and letting her help me with the design of it just makes this pillow all the more special, for the both of us!

 

Similar Posts

27 Comments

  1. That is definitely a lot of hexies!! I knew you had lots, but 1400! WOW! Love the pillow and that pic of Anne! 🙂

  2. I just discovered hexagons too and I am completely hooked. The grey Essex Linen really makes the rainbow colors pop. The pillow is beautiful and I can understand why Anne loves it so. Thank you!

  3. Melissa!
    I LOVE this pillow and your hexies! Fabulous! And of course, the picture of your little girl!!!!!!!!!!! You still need a skirt like hers! XXXX

  4. Wow! I am so impressed with all those hexies! Besides that, your pillow is adorable. Can’t wait to see that special project!!

  5. I love sewing hexies, and this is a gorgeous project using them! I am very impressed at the huge amount of hexies you have made for future projects too 🙂
    Helen x

  6. I love this post – I, too, recently started making hexies (as Angelia says) – a perfect movie-watching project!). May I inquire as to what size hexies you are making? I am doing ones that are 1″ per side right now. And, do you buy your papers or cut your own? Terrific storage case, too!

    Thanks again!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.