Hexies, hexies on my mind

It's been over two months since my last hexagon quilt post! To hold myself accountable (and make sure the hexies won't languish indefinitely in my cupboards in favor of some instant-gratification-type project) I thought I would post periodic updates - so here's what's going on in hexie land (a.k.a my living room floor - the only surface in our apartment that is big enough to lay all these out) these days!

I have made a total of 405 hexies so far - that translates to about 2/3 of what I need for the backgound and about 40% of the total hexies needed for the entire quilt. Slow but steady progress! I'm still focusing on getting the background hexies done first. The other day,  decided to lay out the first three lines of letters, just to get an idea of what the background will look like and what the ratio of white to patterned hexies should be. I want the background to be interesting, but it can't be TOO interesting or I risk taking the focus away from the letters. This is what it looks like so far:

And yes, I am fully aware that in these pictures the alphabet actually says A, B, C, D, E, K, L, M, N, F, G, H, I J. But don't worry, the final quilt won't! :-) As I was laying out the hexies on the floor I realized too late that I had gotten the lines mixed up, but since the point  of the exercise was mostly to determine the ratio of white to patterned pieces I didn't bother rearranging them.

Even though cutting out hexies is quite meditative, I have to admit that cutting hundreds of off-wite solids isn't that exciting. Can't wait to start on the actual letters. And now I really need to decide on colors for the letters - I have been thinking about this for months and I still can't decide! Oh well, I still have over 200 background pieces left to make before I REALLY have to make the decision...

That's my progress so far! If you feel like making your own hexagon quilt, check out this post.