What happens when a project consumes you, AND your brain insists that 3:30 or 4:00 am is a great time to kick on and stress about the day? You have lots of quiet time in which to crochet lots of colorful hexagons and sew them together. This project took just a little more than a month to complete, from start to finish.
You can see my start, and the pattern I put together based on photos from another source, in my previous post.
The finished afghan consists of 72 hexagons: eight each of eight main colors, and two each of four alternate colors. Since I'm a photographer and graphic artist, when it came time to plan the color layout, I naturally turned to photographs and photoshop, rather than a physical layout. I photographed one hexagon of each color, using the dots in the viewfinder of my camera as a placement guide, so all the hexies were roughly the same size and orientation in the photographs. Used a piece of foam core as a background and photographed in the shade outside. Imported the pics into photoshop, selected out the hexagons, duplicated the layers the appropriate number of times, and digitally planned the layout. Below is a pic of the layout in progress.
After I was happy with the arrangement, I exported the JPG and sent it to my phone. Instead of numbering hexagons, I just referred to my picture so I knew which color hexagon to grab next when I was assembling.
I used a reverse mattress stitch with medium gray yarn to sew the hexies together. Some of those stitches are visible on the back, but for the most part they disappear. I was very careful about weaving in all ends, so the back is nearly as pretty as the front. The edging is a single crochet picot stitch (*sc in hexagon, chain 2, sc in 2nd chain from hook*, repeat in next stitch) in the same color as the hexagon.
I've already given this afghan away, but it turned out so well that I've got four hexies complete for another one. :) This one will be for ME!
