Painted Hexagons - part 4

Finally a finished quilt top !
I say this seldom but am I glad it is finished. This was a surprisingly tedious job and whilst I am very happy with its outcome, I struggled over the last 15 or so Hexagons. It just dragged on too long.

Things looked up when I put it all together with the gorgeous newspaper print as background.

And I love how each hexagon is framed by the solid fabric which I think brings it all together. I had enough fabric fro 39 hexagons. Actually I would have had enough for a few more but not enough for another row of hexagons, so I left some of the purple fabric out as I thought I already have enough of it in here and I am not that fond of purple. 

It was a bit of an odd experience to just use the prints in this collection because I have not done this in a long time. It was sort of restrictive and possibly added to my being a little bored with the hexagon making in the end.

But I do love the way it looks and how each some of the prints change their characteristic through the hexagon shape.

And although paper piecing took a long time I am convinced it was the right decision because I would have had a lot more issues with biased cuts otherwise.

I kept the paper on as long as I could and removed first just the bits that covered the solid fabric when piecing the hexagons to the newspaper triangles and then later on once I created the diagonal rows, the rest. In this way the whole thing kept its shape rather well.

Now onto basting and quilting. But how to quilt....