It’s spooky season. And I love Halloween. I typically start decorating on October 1st. But not this year. Our house is still on the market and there is an open house on the 5th. So I’ve decided to keep the bats, rats, jack o lanterns and skeletons under wraps until after the open house. Which is today!

But I can still stitch away on my Halloween hexies. Which made me think…..

I keep insisting that Hexies are fun and easy. So perhaps I should give you a little demo of how I make my hexies. Just to convince you!

These hexies are 1.25 on each side and 2.5 inches at the widest point. My favorite size.

I have several different hexie templates. I use the 3” wide template because I like to have a nice seam allowance.

You don’t have to use a template. You can easily just cut around the shape. Leave a generous seam allowance.

I print the hexie form onto card stock. I can’t remember where I downloaded them from but you could probably do a Pinterest search and get some free hexie forms. I believe you can also buy them. (But I’m all about free.)

Before hand-stitching, I clip one side down with wonder clips. If you don’t have wonder clips, just put a pin in the center. It just needs to hold the form to the fabric. If you use a pin, you will get stabbed occasionally. Fair warning!

Then you just fold each side down and put a couple little stitches on each fold. I use any kind of thread in any color for this step. No one will ever see it. It is just a temporary stitch.

I use a ladder stitch to put my hexies together. You could use a whip stitch. I just like that the ladder stitch is almost invisible. I use a matching thread. I also use a polyester thread like Gutterman. The cotton thread I tried snapped too many times while I was doing the hand-stitching.

For this hexie quilt I am putting 19 hexies together for each “flower”. One of the border print for the center and then six of the accent and another 12 for the outside border.

Leave the hexie forms in place until ready to machine stitch down.

When ready to machine stitch, press the hexies, and then take out the card stock. Unlike paper piecing, these papers pop right out . I find that they can’t be used again because they’ve been folded several times while hand-stitching. I toss them and make new. Perhaps the ones that can be purchased are sturdier.

I haven’t decided on the final lay out but I’m considering machine stitching these hexie flowers down on background fabric and batting. First I’ll use a glue stick to keep the flower in place. I’ll be doing a type of “quilt as you go”. I’m not prepared for that yet because I’m not finished with making hexies. I have no idea how big this quilt will be at this point.

Seventeen hexie flowers finished!

I doubt if I’ll get this quilt done before Halloween but I think I’ll work on it until it’s finished–I really enjoy making hexies and I love these prints!