Hi! Over the weekend, my friend Sara shared the mini I made her for the B&C Mini Swap – a quilt swap that Christine and I hosted on instagram for lovers of Bonnie & Camille fabric. And who doesn’t love Bonnie & Camille?! (Links are for both ladies’s IG feeds – they are amazing women with amazing talent!) Since so many people were interested, I thought I would share some of the details about my mini here!
I’ve been a bit curious about english paper piecing hexagons but had never tried it, and the idea of hand sewing a ton of tiny hexagons together by hand seemed slow and daunting to me. Then I came across the Modern Handcraft blog and discovered Nicole’s Modern Hexies projects, and I was in. And I knew that a project like this would be perfect for busting through some of the scraps I’ve been hoarding in ziplock bags all over my sewing room. And no tedious hand sewing hexes together!
I knew I wanted my mini quilt to really showcase the range of Bonnie & Camille and to show off as many of the lines as I could, and I love the idea of a cascading rainbow of fabric. After going through my stash and being gifted scraps of my some of my IG friends, I was able to include a bit of Ruby, Vintage Modern, Marmalade, Happy-Go-Lucky, Scrumptious, April Showers, and Miss Kate! Actually Sara was one of the girls to pass some of her scraps on to me, before she knew the mini was for her! It was so neat to be able to give them back to her like this.
I printed off and cut my hexagon templates (find it from Modern Handcraft in this post), cut my scraps into 2.5″ squares and gathered my supplies – a small sewing scissors, needle and thread, and a fabric glue stick. (I personally like to use a tiny bit of glue between my fabric and paper to keep things extra tight!) I packed it all into a travel pouch and slowly churned out hexagons all across a road trip from Wisconsin to Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota. When I had a healthy stack of hexagons, it was time to turn them into a quilt!
For the full tutorial by Modern Handcraft, click HERE. It walks you through everything you need and exactly how to make this quilt work! The secret – Aleene’s Fabric Fusion glue! Also, for a little extra help making sure all my hexagons were equally spaced, I drew out my lines using Pilot Frixion pens. I love these pens and use them all the time! They erase like magic with the heat of an iron and are a must have staple in my sewing room! For those interested in a fabric glue stick, I use Dritz 401 Fabric Glue Stick. I love this glue stick and have used it for paper piecing and for basting complicated seams while quilting. (affiliate links)
Since I love Sara, I decided to give up some of my precious cuts of Ruby for the backing. I paired it with simple black on white dots binding, to kind of bring all the colors on the front of the quilt together. These days I tend to do a lot of machine sewing for my binding, but I decided to go back to hand sewing, since it was a small enough project. I forgot how much I love a good hand sewn binding! I also added one of my “quilt labels” – a custom wooden button with Heartmade Life engraved on it. I have quite a button collection, so having my own custom buttons is a huge happy for me. 
I loved making this mini for Sara and being a part of such a fun swap! And thank you all so much for your kind words on my quilt – each one means so much to me! Have fun making your own Modern Hexies! To see more projects using Modern Handcrafts tutorial, check out the #modernhexies tag on instagram or the Modern Handcraft Flickr group.
