Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a great project for you. Let’s
take a look at this quilt behind me. You’re going to be a little surprised at how this
comes out because it’s a hexagon quilt. And it’s sitting on these half square triangles.
But I’ve got a secret way to make it that makes it really easy. So to make this quilt
what you’re going to need is one packet of ten inch squares. And we have used Modern
Backgrounds Luster by Zen Chic for Moda. And it’s a beautiful line. There’s lots of
lights and darks in there which make for great half square triangles, which is what we’re
going to do with this. You’re also going to a yard and a half for your hexis. And we
just cut them into five inch strips so we can cut our hexis out of them. For the inner
border you’re going to need a half a yard. Right here this little, little inner border.
It’s just a half a yard of fabric. And this outer border out here is a six inch border
and you’re going to need a yard and a quarter for that. For the back on this one you’re
going to need 4 ½ yards and we’ve used the same backing fabric that we did on the
border for this quilt. It just makes it look really pretty. It brings it all together.
Alright so let me show you how to do this because this is really fun. You’re going
to be a little surprised at what happens here. So first thing we’re going to do is take
our half hexi template. Oh yeah, you’re also going to need a little half hexi template.
I cut my background into five inch strips. And then we’re going to cut our half hexis
out of that five inch strip. So you’re just going to match it on the line. And what I
do is I use my long piece like this and then, and then I just turn it like this. And then
I can go across and over and down. And it will give me two hexis like that. You’re
going to need eight hexis for each square.
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our square right here. And we are
going to put two hexis together. Match them right up exactly. And line them up in the
center of our square. Now there’s a couple of ways you can do that. One is you can fold
this and get a press line like that. And then make sure this is in half. You know what I
got that pretty exact. I didn’t realize that. I was going to say the other way to
do that is just to eyeball them because you’re stacking them together you don’t have anything
to match up. They will match up automatically. What I’m going to do is I’m going to lay
these on here carefully and I’m going to put my top piece on. So I have a light bottom
square with my hexis all the way around. And I’m going to take these pins out. And then
I’m going to put my top piece on like this. And then I’m going to slide my pins back
in. Now if you leave your pins out of the seam way, you know out of the way of when
you’re sewing the seam, you can actually leave them in underneath. What I’m going
to do though is I’m just going to slide my needle back like this. I mean my pin back
like this. And I’m going to pin it on all four sides. I’m not much of a pinner but
when you’re dealing with something inside that you don’t want it to move. And you
know you can always roll this up a little bit and look. And make sure it’s still right
there in the middle. And then put a pin in there because what we’re going to do is
we are going to do the same thing that we do on our half square triangles. So we are
going to sew a quarter of an inch all the way around this square. So let’s go to the
sewing machine and do that.
Alright we’re just going to line up our quarter of an inch seam and we’re going
to make sure we’re on a good straight stitch here. And we’re just going to slide down
the side. And we’re going to come down this side and just continue all the way around.
That quarter of an inch on all four sides. Make sure you catch that little hexi
in there. Alrighty. So now comes the surprise. We’re going to take these pins out. And
just like we cut our half square triangles we are going to cut this diagonally both directions.
So we’re going to cut here and then we’re going to cut this way. I’m actually going
to flip this over so you can see it a little better. So I’m going to line it up corner
to corner. And we’re going to make a cut here. And we’re going to make a cut here.
Just like this. And this is my favorite way to make half square triangles. But now when
we open these, here’s the surprise. You’re going to have that little half hexi but because
you put two you’re going to be able to iron them over just like that.
So let’s go to the ironing board. And we’re just going to keep it to the dark still. And
so we’re just going to lay that on there and press them out. And we’re going to do
this on all four sides. Now we need to stitch all the way around them. You can use a tiny
little zig zag or you can use a buttonhole stitch. I’m going to do a buttonhole stitch
on mine. Now normally I would use a dark thread or match, match this to my thread. I’m going
to use white because I want you to be able to see what I’m doing. And so I’m just
going to come along here with a little button stitch. So we’ll sew along the edge of that.
You know I guess you could use a contrasting thread if you wanted it to show up. It doesn’t
look terrible. I’m just a matcher. I’m a matcher so I match everything. Because these
were laid right together and sewn into the seam they match perfectly. Because if you
tried to do them separate there’s always that chance they’d be off. And this way
they come out exactly right. Alright there we go. Now I’m going to clip that. And you’re
going to do this to all your blocks. You’re just going to do your little blanket stitch.
Let me trim these threads. This is kind of probably a dangerous way to trim these threads.
Oh my gosh I’m sorry. Use your scissors, use your scissors.
So now you have this cool half square triangle that has a hexagon right in the middle of
it. Because we’ve sewn it in a seam you’ll lose the line and it’s going to look like
a whole hexi on the quilt. You can see that from the quilt behind me. And I want to show
you how we laid this out. So what we did here is we put these together in a chevron. So
you can see if you follow this dark line with me right here. You can see the chevron come
through it just like this. Ok? And to do it chevron what you’re going to do is a row,
sew a row together where your darks come together like this. And then your next row you’re
going to sew together where your lights come together like this. And that’s going to
make your chevron. You see how that’s happening there? Here I’ll put a couple more. Let’s
do this one. We’ve got our lights together. I am so angley challenged. If things get so
turned around to me. Alright so there you can see the big chevron happening.
Now one of the fun things with this because it’s a half square triangle you can do anything
we do with half square triangles you can do with this. So if you want to make these a
block where all the darks come inside like this and the lights come in, you know, then
you’ll have light squares with dark squares accenting your pinwheels like that. It will
be a really cool pattern. I mean this, you guys have got to have fun with this layout.
I can hardly wait to see what you do. You can do pinwheels. So we put them around like
this. Wait I’ve got something wrong here. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark, light,
dark, all seams to the center. And so there’s your pinwheel block. Oh my gosh, there’s
just so many fun things you could do with half square triangles. So even though we set
ours as a chevron, you have fun with it. Play with it. This is a great little surprise hexi
that just pops out on your seam when you sew your two blocks together just like we do half
square triangles. And I just hope you enjoy it. I had fun making it. And we hope you enjoyed
this tutorial on the Surprise Half Hexi from the MSQC.