Attack of the rogue hexagons

I've been thinking about making a hexagon quilt for quite some time. I have lots of lovely childhood memories of my mum making them. Last time we visited my parents, my daughter slept under one of those quilts. That might have been the last straw that made me start this quilt with no idea of who it was going to be for.

 It didn't take long for my son to claim this 'honeycomb' quilt for himself. I think perhaps I saw this coming and deliberately avoided any overtly girly prints. It was all going rather swimmingly and I was enjoying picking it up, adding a few hexagons, (after wrestling them off the cat).

When suddenly the rogue hexagons hit. I'm not sure where they came from and it took me a little while to realise, but a number appeared that were about 5mm bigger than the rest. I rather stupidly kept adding them in, presuming it was just a blip but after a while they were just too big to tweak into place. Perhaps because a lot of this quilt has been made in the evenings when the light isn't great and I am a bit tired I kept sewing for longer than I should. When I finally realised that I had added about 6 of these rogue hexagons and they were spoiling the party, I had some very frustrating unpicking to do.

So, naughty hexagons gone, and only good, uniform, well behaved ones left, progress has been better. 

I started off with about 5 colours, planning a nice random pattern. But I realised pretty quickly that you need rather a lot of different patterns to be random, and even then it's hard to avoid 2 dark colours together or too many dots in the same place. So I have ended up with 11 different fabrics in all and as I have cleverly chosen a few that are running low, I really hope I don't run out.

You can find the fabrics I have used here, they include some absolute favourites of mine, and I'll be revisiting a variation of this colour scheme for my triangle quilt.

And if proof were needed that I am becoming overly sentimental as I get older, I have set my daughter to work unpicking the hexagon templates and taking them out. I loved doing this as a child, it's so satisfying turning it from a crinkly, rigid paper quilt to a lovely soft fabric one. I think she enjoys it, but sometimes I think she may be humouring me, bless her.

PS I have just noticed that these colours match my blog colour scheme!