Floating Hexagon Mini Quilt

I have a confession to make.  I spend too much time on Pinterest.  One day while exploring, I came across this machine stitched hexagon mini quilt.  I thought it was gorgeous, so I pinned it.  I also took the time shortly thereafter to read the whole post and watch the hexagon making tutorial that she referenced.  And looked at her post about the holiday mini quilt she made.  And I was hooked.

Instead of making the quilt that I originally saw posted, I ended up with something a little more like the second one.

I went through my piles of scraps and found six variations of purple fabric that I've used mostly for things for my daughter (like this quillow).  I decided this would be a mini quilt for my daughter's American Girl style dolls.  Then, I got to work sewing hexagons.  

I wanted to spend as little money as possible on this project, so I printed my own hexagon templates on card stock and cut them out myself.  I got the template here.

I made 24, then ironed them, took out the templates, then made 24 more, and kept going.  I found out later that I needed 99 total hexagons.  I did 18 in each of five different colors and 9 in a sixth color.


















I did have to buy the backing fabric and I let my daughter pick it out.  I wanted white so the hexagons would "pop".  She picked a white with a bit of a faint design on it.  I cut two pieces of the white fabric and one piece of batting at 18" x 25".  I used basting spray (for the first time) to hold the layers together.

I tried a few different designs for the layout of the hexagons.  

Scattered, mostly random

Pattern

We liked this one best so I ran with it.

Light to dark - the winner!

After laying them all out perfectly and making sure I had the correct number of each color, I used fabric glue and glued them all into place.  (Part of laying them out perfectly was drawing a horizontal line with a temporary marker every two inches to line up the top of the hexagons in the odd numbered columns.  The hexagon was about 1 3/4" tall when measured from parallel sides.  I allowed about 1/4" in between.)

All glued down and ready to be quilted

Next up was quilting.  I followed the instructions on the mini quilt tutorial. And I love how it turned out!

Close up of a quilted hexagon

And another one

Then I machine bound the quilt.  After making 99 hexagons by hand, I didn't want to hand stitch the binding.

And that's it!  The mini quilt is done!

Finished!!!

More pictures...

quilt detail

showing machine binding

Quilting pattern on the back (yikes, my white doesn't look very white)

Looking down the quilt