Concentric Hexagons - Finished!

I set the goal of finishing this one before the boy got back from his holiday, and it was finished 11pm the night before he got back, hurrah! The quilt is now living on the boys bed (distinct from me giving the quilt to him, it's just on loan). It's BIG too, at least queen sized (2.1m square), but I haven't actually measured it now it's finished.

I don't know how people sew a whole quilt by hand with a running stitch though. I'm ok with a whip-stitch in English paper piecing, and a blind stitch for the back of the binding, but having to stitch the last 10 inches of binding down on the front by hand was actually really difficult!

The quilt started with some pre-cuts I was gifted a few years ago, and a mini challenge to myself to make something slightly modern out of the traditional style fabrics. Other than the "jelly roll" and "hunny bun" I added two solid hexagons from some matching fat quarters, and then a stack of cream homespun from Spotlight that matched the cream solid in the range. I then bought some matching fabric for the backing and binding. The wadding I used was just some cotton stuff from Spotlight (in a big unlabelled box, bought off the roll). I'm not sure I'd use it again, as it doesn't have much drape, but it's nice and warm.

It's the first full sized quilt that I've free motion quilted, I've only free motion quilted baby quilts before. I'm very proud that I managed it, it wasn't as difficult as I expected, it just took patience with getting the quilt situated so it wasn't pulling.

Bek has asked me for a sort of "how to" of the design process of this quilt, so at some point I will put something together for that.

Not as good as new

So you know how I was excited that my machine was fixed the other day? Turns out it's not :( I'm going to have to call up the shop tomorrow and find out what to do now.

However, mostly due to the generosity of other members of my quilting guild, at my SASD today I finished the quilting on my concentric hexagons quilt and stitched the binding down on the front. Only the hand stitching on the back left to go, hurrah! So a huge thanks must go to Annabel and Bek for their generosity.

Super Stippling Progress

After my Free Motion Practice post the other day I started quilting my concentric hexagons quilt (which really does need a better name, suggestions please?) and I thought I'd share my progress.

Since the weather has been pretty hot here this week I sought sanctuary of the living room, as my room can get very hot in summer and the living room has air con. However, we currently don't have a dining table, so I set myself up in a very unconventional and probably highly un-ergonomic setup using my coffee table.

I used the coffee table, a stool and the couch to support the weight of the quilt so that it wasn't pulling on where I was stitching. Then as always I always do whatever type of quilting I'm doing, I started close to the middle and worked my way out.

Despite the unconventional setup I am pretty happy with how my stitching is working out.

It also looks pretty good on the back (see below). Since the print is quite busy already and the navy bits alerady have some beige lines it actually (surprisingly) sinks into the print quite well and looks alright.

I did maybe 1/4 of the quilt over the course of the evening, which was 3 or 4 bobbins worth of thread I think.



You can see above how much I have done so far. I started up the top, and worked my way around a bit in the middle then moved across to one edge, then back across to the middle then kept kind of wiggling my way out until I reached the corner and then started working across the bottom edge.



I'm planning to take this along to the MMQG Sit and Sew Evening tonight to make some more progress on it.

And just so you don't think that everything always works perfectly, here's some stitching that went wrong:

This happened straight after I re-threaded the machine after the first bobbin ran out. I stitched maybe 6-10" of stippling and noticed that the stitches looked a bit loose. Then when I looked at the back of the quilt I had these terrible loops happening. Not good! So I stopped, unpicked the bad stitches (which thankfully was very easy) and completely rethreaded the machine, which fixed the problem.

So, if you ever end up with funny stitches, the best course of action is to re-thread your machine, as that usually fixes the problem

Basted Hexagons

I have made great progress in the "concentric hexagons" quilt project I started a while ago using the pre-cut fabric kindly gifted to me. I had made up all the half hexagons at my retreat back in November, and I took them with me to Perth at Christmas to work on the final layout of the quilt. While I was there I stitched together the half-hexagons into rows, and at the MMQG SASD I stitched the rows together and the borders around the outside... except when I got home I realised that I had put the borders on the wrong edges, and rather than making the quilt square had succeeded in making it more rectangular! oops! I spent some time this evening unpicking the borders and re-sewing them back onto the correct sides, and thus finally finishing the quilt top:

I had decided for this project to challenge myself to try and make something with a modern aesthetic despite using the very traditional styled fabrics. The key to my "vision" was negative space, which was filled perfectly by some homespun from spotlight in pretty much exactly the same colour as the solid cream in the range.

What do you think? Am I on course for making a "modern" quilt from the "traditional" fabrics? 

One of the fat quarters had the name of the range on the selvage, which meant that I could look it up and managed to buy some on the internet from Lonestar Quilting for the backing and borders. The range is Wiscasset by Moda, and I chose this large "cheater quilts" print for the backing, because I quite like the print and it was completely lost having been cut up for the hexagons. I particularly like how it's got several of the prints from the line within its design.

After finishing the quilt top, the rest of my evening was spent basting the quilt (in the sanctuary of my air conditioned living room). I intend to machine quilt this one, so I had intended to spray baste it, but forgot to buy more spray. Since I had the evening free, rather than wait until I have some spray I decided to pin baste it instead. Hopefully the pins won't be too much of a pain when it comes to the machine quilting (I'm planning to free motion quilt it), I've only used pin basting for hand quilting so far.

Lastly, I'd please like some opinions on what colour bobbin thread to use when quilting. I have some cream that matches the solid for the top, and was probably thinking Navy for the bobbin (ie back). The tension when quilting is pretty good on my machine, so it's unlikely to show through to the front but it's possible.... What would you use?

Retreat 2.0

This past weekend I headed up to hepburn springs again for another retreat. We had such fun on the last retreat back in May that we booked in for another, even longer, one while we were still there. This time we stayed 3 nights, and it was lots of fun and incredibly productive.

I got lots of sewing done, including assembling the blocks for two quilt tops. Above are the base blocks for the quilt I am making with the spotty sateen fabric I bought earlier in the year. The blocks have since been cut into quarters bento box style, and the quarters trimmed to 8" square ready to be assembled into a quilt top.


Below are the rest of the hexagons that I started on the other weekend, and I love how they look, piecing them together has definitely transformed the fabric. I just need to get some solid cream fabric and I will begin assembling the quilt top of this one too.

This means that soon I'll have some quilting projects on the go again, which i'm excited about. I'm planning on hand quilting the spotty one, although don't exactly know what design yet, so suggestions gratefully received.  In contrast I'm considering machine free motion quilting the hexagon one, probably just with a stippling pattern, however as i'm hoping the quilt will be about queen sized I may regret that decision and change my mind with either the quilting method or design.


I did get some other stuff done over the weekend, about which I shall blog in due course.

Something New...

I haven't done much sewing lately. Partly because initially I wasn't really in the mood, but then as my retreat grew closer (next weekend, hurrah!) I kind of felt like I shouldn't be working on things but that I should "save" them for the retreat, which is just plain old silly! So last night I sat down and bit the bullet and started something new just because.

I made a decision and started sewing with the pre-cuts that my gran and Jo had given me for Christmas quite a while back now. I have a jelly roll (2.5" strips), a honey bun (1.5" strips) and a charm pack (5" squares) and then two coordinating fat quarters. So far I'm working with the strips. Sewing them together and cutting them back up again into triangles, which I'm sure you can guess, will become hexagons:

I'm not sure how it's all going to work out, the design is still forming in my mind. I think I'm going to need to buy a little more fabric to make the quilt a useable size, and I'd quite like to try doing something a bit unexpected with it... but I'm going to finish making these units and see how they look before I decide.

Today's lesson...

Today's lesson is not to sew when you are tired and distracted, because things go wrong! (although you probably knew that)

Can you spot the odd one out?!

Does anyone have any tips for unpicking a whip stitch?

Retreat Recap

A certain friend has told me off for not posting about the retreat last weekend yet, so I thought I'd better get on that this weekend!

The retreat was AMAZING. We were a little worried going up there because when it was being organised we had the pick of dates we wanted, so we were worried it would be too good to be true. However, a sneaky peek through the windows while we were waiting to be let in put our minds at ease - the place is beautiful! It turns out that Craft Retreat had only opened in March, which was when we were making our booking. It sounds like it's already filling up for the rest of the year.

We had Friday afternoon and evening, all day Saturday and Sunday morning to sew, and PLENTY got done!

Our Retreat Group. From left to right: Helene, Me, Bronwyn, Kirsty, MJ, Annabel, Marg and Andrea. (plus Louise, who arrived late so isn't pictured)

When we got there on Friday I got to working on my genome quilt, until dinnertime which was a delicious "planned pot-luck" dinner at the house. We then watched Murials Wedding and added green border hexys to a couple of hexagon flowers while watching the film.

Making use of the design wall

Saturday was dedicated to sewing together my wonky stars from the MMQG quilting bee into two tops (well technically a top and back, but the quilt is destined to be reversible). I did the last couple of seams on Sunday morning, but was very happy to have achieved the goal of getting them done. I'll post a more detailed post about how I went about putting the tops together at another date. (I took lots of in process photos on Helene's lovely camera).

My two finished wonky star tops

Saturday night we went out for a delicious and decadent meal at Mercato, after which some of the group watched another movie, and the rest (including me) chose to continue sewing.

All my genome quilt blocks so far

Sunday morning before leaving I chugged out a few more genome quilt blocks, bringing my total for the weekend to 16 blocks. 29 down, 20 to go, I'm getting there slowly.

The sheet I've been using to mark off the blocks as I've done them - the red crosses were from when I was rotating the HSTs, and now colouring them in means I've sewn the block together.

So all in all, an AMAZING weekend! We had such a good time we're planning to go back in November... hopefully I'll be able to go too.

Good Luck Coin Purse

Did you know that elephants are supposed to be good luck? Apparently so, but only if their trunks are pointing upwards.

A while back I embroidered this elephant, and I decided it needed to be made into a little coin purse. If elephants really are good luck then on a coin purse is a good place to have one don't you think?

So I followed Florence's tutorial to make one. The elephant on one side, some coordinated paper pieced hexagons on the back, and some green fabric for a lining.

This purse has been gifted to my good friend Kim as a Birthday present.

Sudden Accelleration

I have been sewing together some of my hexagon flowers to start creating the quilt top, and have discovered that after what was almost painfully slow progress sewing the flowers, sewing them together goes surprisingly quickly!

To that end, I have now got half of the quilt top completed. I decided to go with a regular repeat of the six types of flowers for the layout, with 96 flowers on the final top, which makes the top a similar size to my couch quilt, the size of which has been given the seal of approval by a great number of different users.

I have enough flowers sewn together for another quarter of it, and will need to cut out, baste and sew together more hexies for the last quarter. While that thought could potentially dishearten me as to how much I still have to go, I'm absolutely loving it, so the thought excites me - I'm definitely in a "half done" rather than "half to go" mood with this quilt.

I have also discovered that unpicking the basting and removing the papers is very satisfying!

Still hexing away

I've been chugging away at my hexy-flowers when I have the time, and over Christmas I made particular progress. My flower count is now 36 flowers with 5 green hexys for the border (having 5 green hexys will allow me to tessellate them all together to make the quilt top) and another 34 flowers without the green border yet.

Soon I'll need to choose a layout so that I can start sewing them all together. Exciting!

Flown West

I have flown west for Christmas (and some slightly more consistent weather).

Thanks to the knowledge gained from Adele and her recent trip, I took my sewing stuff on the plane. Therefore, 4 hour flight = 4 hours of hexagon sewing.

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope your climes (whatever they are) are treating you well.

Hexy Borders

I showed you the fabric I've got for my hexagon quilt - well here's a preview of what it will look like. One row of "pale mint" hexagons around the flowers.

I think it looks great. Now to decide what to have for the backing and binding, quilting design etc etc... oh and finish sewing the flowers together of course.

51 down...

51 hexagon flowers down...

... still lots to go.

Hexy Progress

My trip is advancing at a scary speed, the main holiday part is over and I'm flying to the US today for a conference (and then three more days of holiday in New York). Since leaving my Gran's house last week I've been having a great time catching up with friends; one night in Bristol and then a week in Birmingham.

I haven't forgotten that I promised you updates from the festival of quilts, and you will get them once I have more reliable computer access and thus the means to post photos. However, something I have been plodding along with (aided by my new pouch for them) is my hexagons. A fair few done on train and coach journeys, and some more done quietly in front of the tv, I'm amassing quite a few hexagon flowers now. 25 down and a hundred or so to go, and then I need to get some pale green solid to add borders around the flowers. It's a good job that I'm still enjoying the process!!

I know I was supposed to wait...

I know I was supposed to wait to start turning my new fabrics unto hexagons until the MMQG meet tomorrow, but I just couldn't!

I pre-washed them last night and ironed them today and the little pile of fabric was just yelling at me "cut into me, start stitching me"... and I gave in.

I've made one flower and I love it!!!

Now no more until tomorrow... maybe...

Already thinking ahead...

Despite the fact that I haven't even started sewing my genome quilt top together yet, I'm already thinking about what I'm going to start working on once I've finished it.

These thoughts aren't due to lacking enthusiasm for the genome quilt, as I'm definitely fulfilling my sewing resolution of enjoying the process. The thoughts are due to my upcoming trip overseas.

This time in 4 weeks I will be on a plane jetting away to England!!! I'll be away for 5 weeks, with 4 of them in England and one in the USA (Philadelphia and New York to be more precise). While I'm away I'll have many opportunities for fabric shopping; from the quilt show i'm going to, to visiting Cowslip workshops to see Jo, and of course, taking advantage of my time in the U S of A!

Because of this, I need to decide what my next project will be so that I can buy fabric for a reason rather than just randomly.

Which brings me on to the reason that this post is smattered with inspirational hexy pictures. I think my next project might be a paper-pieced hexagon one. I've been considering it for a while, and with the formation of the MMQG have discovered that I need a hand sewing project as I don't have the means to get my sewing machine to the meetings.

Now I need to decide - Do I want a 'scrappy' hexy quilt, or do I want a particular layout? I'm erring more towards a layout since my last ones have all been quite scrappy. But what kine of layout; Flowers, Diamonds, Stars, something else?

What do you think? What layout? What colour scheme? What style? Suggestions please!

The only thing I'm sure I want to do is to have a more 'interesting' edge - ie somehow keep with the shape of the hex's rather than square it off.

Still not sure on how I'd quilt it though, as my hand quilting leaves a bit to be desired, yet it seems somehow wrong to hand piece a quilt then machine quilt it.

(Click on any of the images in this post to see the incredible sewers that created them!)