Blue Hexies is complete

I finished binding the Blue Hexie wall hanging.  Blue Hexie was a slowly evolving project, a "design as you go" - over a period of almost 7 years.  

It all began on a guild shop hop bus trip to the Black Hills in the fall of 2015.  I hand stitched every one of these little hexies on the bus, to give me something to do while traveling.  I used a blue batik charm pack, cut into 2.5" squares and used the English Paper Piecing technique.  Then those hexies sat in a drawer in this recycled lunch meat container until this winter. 

I saw a pillow online made using blue hexies stitched into flower shapes, and it was one of those lightbulb moments.  So . . . they came along with me in the car to and from Brookings all winter for Jackrabbit basketball games.  First I hand stitched them into the flower shapes, and then hand appliqued them onto 6" a variety neutral batik squares.   Sixteen of these blocks seemed like a good size.

But it was too big for a pillow, so I decided it would become a wall hanging instead.  Or a table topper possibly.  It needed at least one border, maybe 2 borders.

This set of blue batik 2.5" strips kept calling to me, and eventually became a dark inner border, and then a piano key border.  I even mitered the corners.  There were plenty of strips left to do the binding.  And the remainder of these blue strips are now living in the batik stash. 

The quilting is lovely, with a blue variegated thread.  This photo actually captured the colors very accurately as the neutrals have a more grey hue rather than creamy like that first photo.  There are still some blue hexies left, and maybe in another 7 years I'll have made something else to use them up. 

Now I have more binding to do.  On Tuesday I picked up this quilt from the long armer.  I absolutely LOVE the variegated thread she chose, and the design she used.  Great job!

This is a Quilt of Valor using the Beads (or Chandelier) pattern.  I think a scrappy QOV version may be in my future too.  Or possibly as another option for a block drive for our group.