Hex Club

Within my local group of friends, the 2020 lockdown brought with it a lot of spare time and a surprising number of baby announcements. We wanted a project and also found that collectively we had a lot of fabric offcuts, clothes to chuck out and bits of fabric too ugly to use. The natural conclusion we came to was to make patchwork baby quilts! This was a great idea...it kept us busy, used up the ugly fabric and made lovely gifts for all the many babies popping up around the place. The other benefit of patchwork is that it is easy to learn and we could all make parts of it at home using the same hexagon stencil and then put them all together later. We became a production line of "units" - 4 by 4 hexagons sewn together - which we'd then take to the park to arrange into a 16 by 16 hexagon baby playmat. One of the hex crew would then be in charge of sewing the units together and pass it on to another to quilt it and sew the edging on. As lockdown eased we hung out in each others garages and gardens busy hexing. Over time we have established a network of fabric swatch trading and distribution.

Every stitch of these quilts were hand sewn and I think the outcome is gorgeous. Certainly the babies all seem thrilled. Even the most ugly fabric (a "christmas carrots" print being the worst in my opinion) is lifted up by the patchwork...it seems that you literally cannot make this style of patchwork ugly.

Here are some babies that gave positive feedback on the quilts...

The many and miriad creation of 4 by 4 hex "units"...

Assembling the units and quilting...

The hideous christmas carrots...