my first foray into hexagons | a quilt for Lillia

Thanks so much for all the sweet comments yesterday about the mug rugs! I really like making them so it's great to see so much interest. I'm going to be putting a few more in the shop, hopefully soon! I received a few requests for specific fabrics and colors and it will be fun to make some custom designs. If you missed the announcement yesterday you can see what I'm talking about here - mug rugs are now in the shop, and from now until the week before Christmas you can receive a discount on your purchase of one (or more!) to help out with all your holiday shopping. Now, back to sharing all the baby quilts! 

I made this quilt for a sweet baby girl who's just a little younger than Finn. I loved the bright and feminine prints mixed with gray and black from Violet Craft's Waterfront Park line of fabric. I had been wanting to work with hexagons for a while and these large ones seemed like a nice way to showcase the prints. I must admit though, I cheated and used this method of piecing! Next time I'll be going all the way, Y seams and all. For now, here's Lillia's quilt, ever so elegantly photographed on my living room floor. It was winter and I wasn't up for a photo shoot in the snow!

My favorite print is the one with the triangles, and also the dots. They remind me of braille or morse code. I quilted simple straight lines across the quilt, along either side of the seams that make up the top, middle, and bottom of each hexagon. I think free motion quilting would have added a little more to the design, but I had yet to attempt that at this point in my quilting career! This quilt was made in either December 2013 or January 2014, and I hadn't free motion quilted anything until this summer.

There's a fun bit of scrappy binding - some solid gray mixed in with a citron Denyse Schmidt print. I used Rachel's method of zig zag binding and I have to say I didn't love it and haven't used it again. Hers is much neater than mine, so there's that, but I prefer the look of a clean straight line stitched in the ditch, or invisible binding. 

I love handwriting my labels on gifted quilts, but I'm looking for some to use on quilts to sell. Any recommendations? I'm going to try to post about another baby quilt finish tomorrow. There are quite a few more that I need to write about!