Hexagonal Quilting Graph Paper

Hexagons, flat side up

Regular hexagons at a 10 mm edge, printed flat-top. They sit on a flat side and the columns run straight down the page.

That orientation is the usual one for quilting, because the rows nest and a whole quilt top can then be planned column by column, from one edge across to the other, without ever having to hold the offset in your head.

English paper piecing

The oldest use, and still the commonest. Cut a hexagon from stiff paper, tack fabric round it, whip-stitch the tacked hexies together edge to edge, and pull the papers out at the end.

This sheet does two jobs. On ordinary paper it is a layout, somewhere to plan a colour arrangement before you cut a single piece of fabric. On card it is the templates themselves — cut along the lines and you have a stack of identical papers, and that stack has to be accurate or nothing lies flat.

Edge length is not width

Quilters usually size a hexagon by its edge, and 10 mm here means the edge, not the distance across.

A hexagon with a 10 mm edge measures 20 mm point to point and about 17.3 mm across the flats. Worth knowing before you order fabric. Ordering to the wrong measurement is the kind of mistake that only shows itself once everything has been cut.

Classic hexie sizes in the English tradition come in inches — half, three-quarter, one — and every one of those is an edge measurement too. A 12 mm edge is close to the half inch.

Grandmother's Flower Garden

Seven hexagons: one centre, six around it. That rosette is the pattern that carried hexagon quilting through the 1930s, and it is still the best first project anyone can pick, because it teaches you the join without committing you to a bedspread.

Plan the rosettes here first. Colour the centres one way and the petals another, and the arrangement solves itself long before any tacking starts.

Other things it suits

Hex maps for tabletop games. Chemistry students drawing benzene rings and carbon chains. Beadwork on a hexagonal grid, and tiling and tessellation work in maths lessons, where the hexagon is one of only three regular shapes that tile the plane on their own.

For pointy-top hexagons, or a different edge length, use the hex grid paper generator, which exposes both.

Print at 100% on A4, US Letter or US Legal — a template printed at 96% is a template that will not match your neighbour's.