Retreat quilt- Elongated Hexagon - Part One

I went to a 3-day retreat with my Vagabonds group in February and needed something to work on!  Believe it or not, I had nothing in progress, except for some clothing.  So, I had to scramble and put together some fabric and a plan for what to sew.

I remembered an elongated hexagon quilt that Ricky Tims demonstrated on The Quilt Show, and looked through my paperwork to find the template that was a free download from their website.   It is a pattern where you sew strips together, kind of wonky.  Then cut out the elongated hexie.  Some of the hexies were made of solid fabric.  He called it Double Tumbler/Lantern. 

Anyway, here is what I did, with some of the steps shown.  I started with a fabulous print fabric made by Marcia Derse.

I pulled fabric from my stash that was either more of her coordinating fabrics, or other fabrics that had similar colors in them.  I didn't do anything else before the retreat.  After I got there, I just free cut strips from my fabrics and put them all into a big brown grocery bag.  (Yes, we still can get those at the grocery stores for free in Washington State.)  The strips varied from 1" to 2-1/2" and I didn't pay attention at all to whether they were straight or ironed.  I mixed up the strips in the bag.  And then just sewed for the 3 days until I had all the fabrics sewn into strips sets.  Here is what I ended up with:

I didn't have a plan on how to cut out the hexagons from the strip sets.  So, I pulled out my handy design book, and sketched up some ideas.  Here they are:

I think I like the one where the stripes are going neither vertical or horizontal, but on the angle. 

Stay tuned for more posts when I start cutting and piecing the quilt together.  Who knows how big it will be when I'm done?  I love the spontaneity of this free cut and sewn quilt.