I’ve been in the Hexagon Zone lately, bringing together some diamonds of hexagons that have been on the go for a while now. They’re my official ‘travel sewing’ and ‘I can’t decide what to sew next’ project. There’s a level of calm knowing they’re there to pick up when needed.

Sometimes there are too many ideas floating around to settle on one - the old adage.. so many ideas, so little time..

And so I turn to hexagons. It gives me time to think and work out my next direction.

Currently, I have a quilt top about three quarters finished - I’ve shared a few sneak peeks along the way but that last quarter is eluding me.

The quilt doesn’t have a name yet. It started just because I wanted to use the divine raspberry linen I stock and a bespoke chartreuse Capel. Maybe I should name it - Just Because ?

Anyway, adding to it as I went along, the leaf green linen spoke to me, as did the green Yuwa check. I threw in some curved piecing - quarter circles are my weakness after all and was planning on some final borders with curved piecing overload and a few more pops of the chartreuse Capel.

Sounds good, doesn’t it. All my favourites are there: Liberty, Linen, checks and stripes.

The only problem is..

Now that I’m at that final border, I’m seconding guessing myself. The quilt top was on my design wall for weeks. Walking in and out of my sewing room several times a day hasn’t helped. The only thing I do know is what I thought should come next - shouldn’t.

Learning Adobe Illustrator a few years back gave me a new way to design my quilts. But drawing up the entire quilt before I thread a needle doesn’t come naturally to me. Previously, my quilts have just evolved. I’d delve into my ‘Someday maybe’ file (which no, is not a neat file but multiple files and an array of notebooks) and choose what comes next based on what I felt like sewing at the time and/or what worked with what I had already pieced.

So what to do now?

Well, after much procrastination, laps of the sewing room or let’s call it creative deliberation - I think the final border needs something pointy.

You can insert laughing emojis here if you like..

What those pointy things are yet is uncertain. It needs to work mathematically - the joys of a medallion quilt.

So, in the meantime I’m in the hexagon zone.

Which admittedly, is not a bad place to be. It’s kind of comforting - there are only so many ways hexagons can fit together. Choosing three fabrics for each diamond of hexagons that I love together isn’t taxing and as long as there is a Liberty print in the mix - all is ok.

I’m not sure when I started this current collection of hexagons. It has to be at least a year now. There were no real rules when I started. I just knew that I wanted to include Liberties - both old and new and a fair whack of stripes, checks and spots to give them some movement and break up the predominantly floral Liberties.

I’ve steadily added to them over this time, picking them up every now and again when I’ve needed them. Salvaging smaller pieces of Liberty, some that I had only enough to cut the centre four hexagons and including a heavier weight linen with an Alice in Wonderland design - which really had no place with Liberty Tana Lawn (and really wasn’t fun to hand piece) but I just loved the design and it had to be in there.