Hexie Madness

In April of 2019 I made a quilt for my son for his college graduation gift. He loves green, and I cut out hundreds of half hexagons from my extensive stash of green fabrics. I had to lay them out in rows on my living room floor, alternating light, medium and darks in a diamond pattern. I sewed half hexes in rows and then sewed the rows together. I worked every night for a couple of week to get the top assembled, because the layout took my entire living room floor and there was not place to walk. I found the perfect border fabric with green trees, I knew my son would love it too!

When the quilt top was done, I used the leftover hexies in the backing. It was a thing of beauty! My son came to spend Mother’s day with me that year and I was very happy to be able to gift it to him before graduation. He was thrilled!

Imagine my incredible disappointment when later in the fall my son told me that he thought he had ripped the quilt and wasn’t using it! He brought it home at Thanksgiving, and looking at fabric tears in it nearly broke my heart! Apparently, one of the batiks that I used in the quilt was rotten, and it tore when when he washed it. This fabric was in 9 hexies and in the inner border, so the damage was pretty extensive. I cried… considered taking it apart, removing the rotten fabric patches and border strips, then re-quilting and reattaching the binding. I cried some more… There had to be a better way to fix this quilt!

I decided to cut out 9 complete hexagons, and hand-appliqued them over the ripped ones and then hand-quilted each one. It took over an hour to complete each hexie repair, some a bit longer, because they where in the middle of the quilt and difficult to reach. For the inner border, I cut 2.5″ strips, folded them like binding, then attached them over the original borders. Luckily, I was able to do this on my sewing machine. All of these repairs took nearly nine months, because I found it very sad to work on.