Rainbow Hexie Quilt and Cushion
This is officially my favourite quilt ever! I know I know, I hear you thinking “but it’s so different from your usual style” and you’re totally right (except for the rainbows!) but this quilt holds so many special memories that it’s extra special. It was a Hexie English Paper Piecing class with a friend that made me try patchwork and got me hoarding rainbow scraps while building up the courage to start a fully hand sewn quilt top. I finally began sewing it the first Christmas I spent with my now-fiancée back in 2018 and spent countless happy train journeys and nights on the sofa stitching away in the year it took to piece. When my Grandad fell and broke his leg while visiting us, I stitched like a woman possessed the whole week he was in hospital, and I will always treasure the time we spent together sorting fabric scraps and putting the world to rights. Ever since I finally finished it in early March 2020 (just in time to take with us on the magical weekend when Ashley proposed) it has been a firm favourite in our house and is an instant cat magnet whenever it gets pulled out. There’s fabric from my very first quilt, some from the first quilt I designed myself, some from the first quilt I had published in a magazine, and so many more special memories.
I won’t lie, the Rainbow Hexie Quilt is a slow make, but goodness is it worth it.
The Rainbow Hexie Quilt and Cushion are the perfect first English Paper Piecing (EPP) projects. An ode to rainbows and a celebration of colour, this quilt will be a favourite for years to come! Go full rainbow or switch it up with a monochrome ombré for a striking and fun skill builder quilt. Never done any EPP before? Fear not because the pattern is jam-packed with helpful tips and diagrams and a full beginner guide to the technique; additionally, I have written a handy how-to blog to get you started. Best of all, as well as being fat quarter and fat eighth friendly, this quilt is perfect for using up your scraps - so it’s time to raid your stash and get stitching!
Choosing my fabrics
This pattern is very scrap friendly so when pulling my fabrics for this quilt I shopped my stash quite heavily and I had a lot of fun mixing and matching prints and shades to build my perfect rainbow. Having said that, I have to admit to buying a fair amount of new fabric too when I didn’t have quite the variety I wanted to hand - what can I say, any excuse to visit my LQS to buy pretty new FQs is a good excuse in my book. Plus, it gave me a reason to buy some prints I wouldn’t usually use in my other designs but worked perfectly in this bright and scrappy quilt.
Instructions for Baby and Throw quilts are included in the pattern alongside a large cushion cover. Here are the all fabric requirements to get you started - all based based on fat quarters and fat eighths, these are intended to give you an indication of how much fabric you’ll need in total. If you’re going super scrappy or fussy cutting then you’ll need more - go wild!
Piecing
With step-by-step instructions and lots of diagrams to help you, even if you’ve never done any English Paper Piecing before you’ll be making progress on your very own Rainbow Hexie quilt or cushion in no time.
There are lots of reasons to love EPP, but my absolute top one is how super portable it is. Instead of being tied to Betty (my sewing machine) in my studio, most of this quilt was pieced either on the go or on the sofa. I spent many nights curled up on the sofa watching my partner hunting for Koroks in Breath of the Wild (if you know you know), and loved grabbing a bunch of basted hexies and throwing them in a bag and taking them with me when I travelled for work. On long train journeys there’s only so many emails one person can handle and sometimes you just need a bit of stitching down time! The most memorable place I worked on this quilt though was the hospital when my Grandad broke his leg while visiting us. In the week before they let him go home we spent many hours sorting through my fabric scraps and putting the world to rights, and I think I stitched a good quarter of the quilt in that week alone - most of the yellow and light green stripes were either sewn or basted in that week. We also calculated roughly how many stitches I’d done on the quilt at that point, and the number was rather astounding!
Of course my kitty co-workers insisted on regular quality control checks to make sure they approved of my fabric choices, stitch quality and, most importantly, how snug it was shaping up to be. As it’s now one of their favourite quilts, I can only assume I passed all their checks with flying (rainbow) colours!
Quilting
It took me a while to decide how to quilt my Rainbow Hexie Quilt as I wanted to do something that complemented the hand stitched piecing and did justice to the full year of work creating the top took (fun fact: I started piecing the quilt Christmas Day 2018 and finished piecing on Christmas Eve 2019!). Eventually I decided to dive in and hand quilt the whole quilt as I just couldn’t settle on a machine quilting design that I was happy with. This meant months more work but I think you’ll agree the incredible texture was totally worth it! This was a very time consuming quilting plan, but I absolutely LOVE how it looks and have zero regrets about my choice.
I backed my quilt with a white flannel sheet for extra cosiness, bought some little spools of 12wt Aurifil in roughly matching rainbow colours and settled in for some quality slow stitching time, eventually finishing in March 2020. This quilt was definitely a labour of love! I didn’t mark up any of my quilting lines as I wanted to embrace the imperfections inherent in hand stitching and instead opted to freehand a triple stripe for each line of hexies. If you’d like to hand quilt your Rainbow Hexie quilt or cushion but need some tips to get started check out my how-to blog that covers everything you need to know, from which needles to use to how to choose your thread and hide your knots.
As always, my cat co-workers had final approval and decided it makes an excellent spot to snooze the day away (exactly what I made it for, of course…). Whenever we pull it out within minutes we have a cat on our lap - it’s a real magnet for cuddles!
Make it your own with some colour inspiration
One of my favourite things about designing patterns is just how different they can look with different colours! I know how much you all love switching up colours in patterns too, so I had a little play and came up with some colourways to inspire you. Still looking for more inspiration? Don’t forget to check out my tester parade and the #RainbowHexieQuilt hashtag to see some of the amazing fabric pulls my testers came up with. Feel free to mix up the stripe order too - as you can see in the tester quilts, this rainbow is just a suggestion!
And there you have it - the Rainbow Hexie Quilt and Cushion!
You can get your own copy of the pattern now by clicking the button below. Remember, I absolutely love to see your makes, so don’t forget to share your projects with #RainbowHexieQuilt, #RainbowHexieCushion and #CaitLisleDesigns hashtags!