More Hexagons

I've started doing some more hexagons to have a hand project, inspired by these amazing quilts on the Fun with Barb and Mary blog. I emailed Barb and she said it's ok to link to her, so have a look at these fantastic hex quilts on her blog. Barb's quilt was made using 3 inch hexagons with the smaller diamonds, but I decided to do mine 2 1/2 inches as at the time the LQS had the 2 different sized diamonds to go with that measurement, but no 2 1/2 inch hexagons. I thought to myself that I would get started on the diamonds and look online for the big hexagon papers and template.

Trust me to decide on 2 1/2 inch hexagons as they don't seem to exist. Hex papers go up in half inch sizes til you get to 2 inch, then go straight to 3 inch. I have searched the world looking for them with no luck. So I thought 'well I'll have to make them'. I'm all for convenience so I always buy papers and a template, however after half an hour in Officeworks this week, I have learnt some new and useful things. I didn't know that copying paper was 80 gsm, and that there are all different weights of paper up to 200gsm which is a light cardboard. Fancy that? I bought 100 sheets of 200gsm for $10, then paid a dollar or so for them to photocopy onto about 15 sheets, and have enough leftover paper to print hexagons for a few years.

First I printed off the hexagons from this website, but even though I put 2.5 inches in the box, when printed the hexagon was a bit smaller than this. So I photocopied the page at 105% and it came out the right size. Only 2 hexagons will fit on the page so I'll make up a page with the 2 hexagons and some diamonds in the gaps and use that as my original. I also bought a sheet of template plastic to make a template.

It's been fun cutting the fabric to make stripes or fussy cutting flowers or berries and stuff. I have the scrap bins out and am trying to use some of them. I'm trying for green and pink as the main colours in this quilt.