Hi everyone, especially applique experts! I've been paper piecing hexagon "flowers" off & on since last summer and I am pretty over it. Can't stand the thought of making a whole bunch of white hexies to put them all together, so I was thinking of appliqueing them onto plain white squares. If I do this, will I have to cut the white fabric away from the back of the flowers? Seems like a lot of wasted white fabric. I don't think I could stand to do that. Would it be okay to leave that layer of fabric on? Would it make it impossible to quilt or would it look weird? Thanks in advance for your input.

I would just leave the square whole and put the hexie flower over it and then stitch it into place leaving the square just like it is. It would be no different then appliqueing a dresden plate quilt!

My dil has one her mom made that has hand-pieced hex flowers appliqued onto 12" squares. It looks pretty. (I'm pretty sure she didn't remove the fabric behind the flowers. It needed more quilting out in the white areas as her batting has drifted and clumped. I'm trying to figure out if I can flatten it back out and quilt it now. Not sure how to do that. :-D

I think the traditional way is to cut away the back after appliqueing, but I don't see why it is absolutely necessary. The only difficulty in leaving it in place would be if you were handquilting, it would make it extra thick.

I wouldn't cut it but I wouldn't hand quilt it either :)

I think you could leave the back on as long as you remove any hex papers first *Ü* Unfortunately, that will make the flower less stable, so you might press/starch it before removing the papers.

The only reason you would need to remove the white fabric from the back would be if you were hand quilting and were concerned about it being too thick. I personally like leaving the fabric behind applique pieces. It helps the applique to stand on top and stand out. Just a personal preference.

I do a lot of appliqueing and never remove the backround fabric, I haven't had any problems quilting them by hand either. I don't use a heavy batting, but use Thermo and it is plenty.

I agree. :-)

I am going to follow this one, I too love piecing hexies, but can't imagine making a whole quilt of them.