Consider this lovely piece of fabric:  Mezzanine by Patty Young for Michael Miller Fabrics.

If we were to cut six equilateral triangles from the same exact locations in the fabric design and then sew those triangles into a hexagon, marvelous kaleidoscopic images would result.

This is the basic premise behind the wildly popular One-Block Wonders books by Maxine Rosenthal and Joy Pelzmann (One-Block Wonders, One-Block Wonders Encore!, and One-Block Wonders Cubed!, all with C&T Publishing).  Put all those hexagons together in one quilt and imagine the results!

When hexagons are divided into three diamonds, the result is known as a Baby Blocks quilt design.  If the diamonds are colored correctly, they create the illusion of three-dimensional cubes.

Who knew hexagons could be this much fun!

I discovered numerous blocks based upon the hexagonal shape.  Let’s take a look at some of them:   

Star of Bethlehem
Six triangles surround an open hexagon.  

 Six Pointed Star
The interior hexagon is divided into six triangles.  

Hexagonal Star
A hexagon is divided into diamonds, and six of the diamonds form a star.  

Star of the East
The interior hexagon is filled with six diamonds and six triangles.  

Mexican Star
The interior hexagon is still filled with six diamonds, but now the star is on point.  The triangles surrounding the hexagon are divided into two triangles and a diamond.   

Sam’s Quilt
The interior hexagon is surrounded by rectangle and kite shapes.   

Wisconsin Star
The star points surrounding an interior hexagon are filled with square, triangle, and chevron shapes. 

 Sylvia’s Choice
The hexagon and the six surrounding triangles are divided by straight lines running from each star tip.  The star is surrounded by a circle shape. 

Savannah Beautiful Star
Only the hexagon is divided and the star points are surrounded by fan shapes. 

Roulette Wheel Star for Nevada
Hexagons are nested throughout this complex block.  A large hexagon is surrounded by a circle; a medium-size hexagon is formed by six triangles and another fits inside it; and the center hexagon is divided into six kite shapes.  Did I miss any?

 Colorado
A large hexagon contains a Star of Bethlehem block with a circle in the middle.  The outer star points are divided to create triangles with diamond tips. 

Sawtooth Star
The interior hexagon is divided into six triangles, but it is barely visible.  All of the large triangles are divided into smaller triangles to create the sawtooth effect. 

Unnamed
A six-pointed star is surrounded by six hexagons.  (Blockbase references Safford and Bishop Pg. 119 for this unnamed block.) 

Columbia
Six hexagons appear to float around six diamond shapes.  Each hexagon is divided into three diamonds to create the illusion of three-dimensional boxes. 

Are you surprised to see so many unique block designs incorporating hexagons?  These blocks look stunning on their own, but how do they work side by side in a quilt layout?  This is where hexagons get really interesting.

Let’s look again at the Star of Bethlehem block and see what happens when four blocks are set side by side in a horizontal layout.

The hexagon and six triangles don’t fit evenly within a square, so the secondary design formed by the four blocks looks awkward.  Compare the horizontal layout to this layout:

Better, right?  What is the difference?  The second quilt is based on a one-patch layout, which allows the blocks to nest against each other and share the common triangles.

What about the Mexican Star block?  Compare the block in the two layouts.

Again, bringing the blocks alongside one another and sharing common triangles creates a more unified design.

There’s more!  Next week, we’ll look at six-triangle hexagon designs and three-diamond hexagon designs.

The next logical geometric shape to consider would therefore be the hexagon.  Why?  Well, what do you get when you put six equilateral triangles together?

Hexagons have a long and impressive history in quiltmaking and are more popular than you might think.  After all, sewing six sided shapes together would appear to have its difficulties.  But quilters throughout the generations have overcome these challenges to create stunning, creative and intricate quilt designs.

When groups of hexagons are colored in concentric circles, the resulting design is known as Grandmother’s Flower Garden.  I was introduced to the design during my beginner quilting class and this block made it into my first sampler quilt.  Notice how the two elongated sides on the dark green hexagons make them look like leaves.

Years later, I made a full-size Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt.  My version features burgundy patches in the centers surrounded by light, medium, and dark shades of green.  Finishing the outside edges is one of the dilemmas presented by the hexagonal shape.  I chose to keep the uneven shape and finished the outside edges with a facing.  (I’ll tell you how to do this is in a future article.)

In 2004, I wanted to enter the Husqvarna Viking quilt competition.  The theme that year was color and, once again, I was drawn to the hexagon shape.  Its six sides corresponded perfectly with the three primary colors and the three secondary colors. 

I thought I could use this to create a unique color wheel quilt.  Starting with a white hexagon in the center, I could add a row of each primary color – in this case, cyan, magenta, and yellow.

Then I could add rows of the secondary colors formed by mixing cyan with yellow, yellow with magenta, and magenta with cyan.

Finally, I could fill the remaining spaces with hexagons of every possibly color combination in between.

And here is the quilt, called Trinity.  You can read more about how I made this quilt in the blog post from February 24, 2010.

How do you sew six-sided shapes together?  Most commonly, it is done with a technique called English paper piecing.  Each hexagon patch is basted to a paper foundation and then either whip stitched together by hand or zigzag stitched together by machine.  This also would make a good subject for a future article!

But next week, we’ll continue our look at hexagons.  We’ll discover some unique hexagonal blocks and we’ll see what happens when hexagons are divided into three parallelograms.

Husqvarna Viking had issued a call for entry and the competition theme was “Color, Couleur, Colore, Kulör!”.  I had the idea to create a color wheel using hexagon-shaped patches, but wondered how I would ever manage to collect enough fabric to make each hexagon a slightly different hue.

I knew how to mix color on the computer.  The three primary colors in digital printing are cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY).  Shown at full strength, these colors are produced by entering a value of 100, i.e. C100 is 100% cyan.

Primary Colors

I could use increments of each shade, from light to full strength, and add black to shade to dark.  An entry of 10 produces a light value of cyan (C10), 50 creates a medium value (C50), and adding 50% black (K50) shades full-strength cyan.

Shading Colors

I could mix colors together to produce secondary colors.  Cyan plus magenta creates a dark blue-violet color.  Magenta with yellow is a reddish-orange.  Cyan plus yellow produces a hue of green.

Secondary Colors

Creating colors on the computer is interesting, but how could it help me with this quilt? 

I knew I could print onto fabric.  I had tried a number of products over the years, but I particularly liked Bubble Jet Set by C. Jenkins Company.  Even better, they had just announced Miracle Fabric Sheets, 8½” x 11″ sheets of fabric already pre-treated for printing and backed with freezer paper.

This seemed like the ideal solution.  I could print the unique color formula for each hexagon patch onto the fabric sheets.  Then I could cut out the patches and prepare them for English paper piecing, which I did on my sewing machine.

Printing onto Fabric

Cutting & Basting

Sewing Hexagon Pairs by Machine

Sewing Rows of Hexagons by Machine

By using this process, I was able to create a quilt with a white hexagon in the center that radiated out to black at the edges.  The six edges of the white hexagon form six lines, three with the primary colors of cyan, magenta and yellow, and three with the secondary colors formed by mixing the primary colors together.  In between is every possible combination of blending those hues.

I called the resulting quilt “Trinity”, in recognition of the original three colors at the foundation of the design.