Upgrade your Hexagon Quilt Design – 6 Ways

Upgrade your Hexagon Quilt Design - 6 Ways

Quilters and other designers have loved hexagons for centuries and bees have loved them for millions of years. Now you can upgrade your hexagon quilt designs.

Table of Contents

Upgrade your hexagons like bees

It’s no wonder that quilters and other designers (and bees) love hexagon quilt designs, a perfect tessellation, an intriguing design.

Hexagon designs have been popular since Roman times. Today, hexagon quilts are a favorite for traditional and modern quilters.

Upgrade your Hexagons with Inklingo

Upgrade your hexagons by printing on fabric

Printing hexagons on fabric with an Inkjet printer make incredibly dramatic improvements over traditional methods of sewing them—in at least 6 ways. Monkey says that’s one for each side.

I chose hexagons for the very first Inklingo shape collection in 2006 because the impact was so overwhelming.

There are 6 videos below and many sizes available in the Shop.

1. Upgrade your hexagons to be more precise.

Print hexagons on fabric or paper

The printed lines with precision corners make sewing hexagons a breeze. It is easier to get absolute accuracy this way.

I marked the sewing lines and seam endings manually for Quilted Diamonds designs and got great results. Of course, printing is much faster and effortlessly accurate.

By the way, when shapes are not available from Inklingo (yet), I still use the freezer paper template method in Quilted Diamonds (2002) and Quilted Diamonds 2 with DVD (2004). I’m very proud of these two books and have kept them in print. (Shop here.)

2. Upgrade your hexagon quilt design to finish faster.

Upgrade your hexagon designs

Some quilters automatically associate hexagons with English Paper Piecing (EPP) but Inklingo gives you more choice.

EPP is slooooow. Every other method is faster and more accurate especially when the cutting and sewing lines are printed on the fabric.

You can sew hexagons by hand (portable) or by machine (faster for some sizes) or a combination of both. Hand + Machine = Hybrid.

I demonstrated Hybrid Piecing in #2911 on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. (You don’t have to be a member to watch. Just sign up for The Quilt Show free trial and binge watch as many shows as you like!)

There is an excellent article on Kerry’s blog about why she switched from EPP to Inklingo.

English Paper Piecing Rescue is one of the most popular pages on the website. Don’t let your EPP UFO be unfinished any longer!

On the other hand, there are 8 Good Ways to Use Inklingo for EPP if that is the method you love.

3. Upgrade your hexagons to be prettier.

upgrade hexagon pressing

Inklingo makes it easier to make unusual and beautiful hexagon quilt designs and your quilt top will even be prettier from the back.  The method of pressing above is illustrated in the Hexagon Quilt Design Book (PDF to download, 70 pages).

Follow any pattern or use the time you save to create exciting settings and color combinations. There are thousands of hexagon quilt designs on Pinterest to inspire you.

The half and quarter shapes in each shape collection are great for pieced hexagons, like Candied Hexagons or VariHex or Millefiore Quilts or 300 Pieced Hexagon Designs (video).

4. Upgrade your hexagons to be safer to cut.

Rotary cut hexagons

This is an important upgrade compared to acrylic templates.

With the lines printed on the fabric, you can use a rotary cutter or scissors. This is important for quilters who need to cut with scissors because of a disability or to make it portable.

Just cut on a line!

Cutting on a line is safer. We place the rotary blade before we position the straight edge (no measuring), so the blade is less likely to hop the edge. It is also easier to reposition the fabric to get a safe cutting angle. We all know someone who nicked a finger by cutting in an unsafe direction. 

You can even cut several layers at a time, with or without lines on every hexagon!

5. Upgrade your hexagon quilt design to be unique.

Upgrade your hexagon quilt design

Inklingo makes the preparation and sewing easier, so you can devote yourself to creating exciting settings and color combinations.

The Inkllingo Hexagon Quilt Design Book includes inspiration and the how-to with sample patterns and worksheets, so you can customize your own design.

The “shape collections” have the shapes to print on fabric (choice of sizes) and the “design book” has inspiration and the how-to.

Three ways to get the design book free!

When you buy related shapes, I manually add the design book to your account as soon as I see your order.

If you buy the design book first (on sale for $10), when you buy related shapes in the next 60 days, I manually refund $10 as soon as I see your order.

If you buy the shapes and the design book on one order, I manually refund $10 as soon as I see your order, so the design book is still free.

6. Upgrade your hexagon quilt design to be more fun.

Upgrade your hexagon designs with fussy cutting

Hexagons are more fun when you have a choice of sizes (Size comparison PDF) and all the related shapes to make hundreds of Pieced Hexagon designs.

I like to add fussy cutting. I demonstrated TWO methods of fussy cutting with Inklingo when I was on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims

My most comprehensive instructions for both methods of fussy cutting are in Winding Ways – Quilting the Inklingo Way. Those instructions also apply to fussy cut hexagons.

You might also want to consider “church windows” or 90° hexagons like one ones used in Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses. Main Lucy Boston Page

Upgrade your hexagon quilt design

I wanted to try to summarize how Inklingo allows you to Upgrade your Hexagons in 6 ways but it wasn’t easy. There are soooo many ways that Inklingo allows you to upgrade your hexagons—it could have been 12! 

The Inklingo method of printing hexagons on fabric makes everything about hexagons better and often costs less than the alternatives.

Inklingo shape collections also allow you to save $ by using fabric more efficiently.  The info in each shape collection shows you how much fabric you need to buy for the number of shapes you need—or whether the fabric in your stash will be enough.

BONUS  Monkey shows you how to print on Jelly Rolls on the All About Inklingo blog.

Quiltmaker Magazine

The Quiltmaker featured Inklingo hexagons.

There are 6 videos in this Playlist. They are all short and crammed with info.

 

Main Hexagon Page (Shop)

If you are new to Inklingo, please start with the free shapes on the Main Beginner’s Page.

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