hexie project: edge update

True to form, I couldn't stand not knowing how slicing off the excess of the hexies would work for creating a straight edge.  :-)

Here's the upper left corner. 

The blue arrow shows the one hexagon that has been stitched in place to become the side edge hexie. 

It fills in the "castle crenelation" space.

This picture shows a blue line on the ruler measuring a 3/8" seam allowance beyond the finished edge of the full hexies. 





I'll cut along the ruler edge, leaving the 3/8" extra to fold under.

And this picture shows the sliced off "excess". 

I had a thought .... what if this sliced off "excess" could be used to fill in the zig-zag space at the top/bottom ? 

*That* would be awesome!

But alas ... it's the wrong shape and doesn't fill the space. 

So, the excess piece from the side hexies is just waste.  It really is too small for me to do anything else with.

Here's the finished edge of the sides of the top ... the half hexie fills in the "castle crenelation" space beautifully and creates a perfectly straight, finished edge.  You can see in this picture both the front and back of this area. 

The basting thread you see on the back of the top *stays* on the hexie, holding the seam allowances in place. 
Because I don't stitch THROUGH the paper template, the basting thread doesn't show on the front and hence, doesn't *need* to be removed. 

I really dislike having more steps than is necessary when working on a project.  If you need to do a step, that's fine ... but in this case, I read a blog (uncredited, I'm afraid) that showed the quilter taking a back-stitch at each folded corner *BUT* not going through the template, then dragging the thread to the next corner, etc until all the corners had been tacked together.  In this manner, all the corners are held down and the basting thread does NOT need to be removed when the hexies are stitched together!  


Although removing the basting thread is very easy ... it just pulls out ... it's one step that I don't have to do with all the many, many hexies that will be in this top.  If I was using smaller hexies, there would be many more of them and removing the basting thread would that much more obnoxious.

And finally ... here's a picture of the finished corner!  I forgot to take progress pictures when I was doing the smaller partial hexies for the top, which fill in the zig-zag space, but it follows  the same procedure as for the side hexies. 

I was pleased to discover that my full-size hexie yields (2) of these smaller hexies, so there is much less waste.

I'm also pleased that, eventually, I will have a nice finished, straight edge on the hexies so that I will be able to easily (and I'm all about being easy!!  :-)   ) sew on border strips.