Archive for the ‘sew it’ Category

A few months back I went out to lunch with a friend and she brought a lovely pillow to share that she had just finished putting together.

Sometime after the lunch I was talking on the phone with my mom and mentioned Amy’s wonderful pillow and that it made me want to start sewing hexagons right that very moment.

Well you’ve got to be careful what you mention to my mom about anything related to quilting.

No sooner had we hung up the phone, that she called her good friend Joyce to borrow her Accuquilt.  And within a few days, she had cut bunches and bunches of hexagons.

Since a quilting project doesn’t hang around long at her house with getting started… She even began putting them together.

After I picking them up from her, I happily sat down one evening to stitched hexagons.

I hadn’t gotten far when my Emma came in too see what I was stitching.

What are you stitchin’ Mama?  What’s it going to be?  Ooooh, I LOVE it.  That is exactly what I want Ruthie’s quilt to look like.

Ruthie is Emma’s 1930’s American Girl doll, so she was spot on, since many of the hexagons are 30’s or 30’s inspired fabrics.

“Mom, do you think I could stitch hexagons?”

“Let’s give it a try.” I said.

So in no time at all Emma was happily stitching together hexagons.  And my new pillow will be a new quilt for Ruthie instead.

She still is learning how to stitch her hexagons around the paper pieces, but she can sew them together using a very neat little blanket type stitch.

If you’ve never stitched hexagons and you’d like to… you certainly don’t need an Accuquilt… you can buy different sized paper pieces at many quilt shops, and cut the fabric out by hand (a rotary cutter works best).   And you don’t use a sewing machine, so they’re a nice on the go project.

The very talented Lori Holt has a great series of tutorials on hexagons found here and here.

I decided that before I was allowed to work on any new projects, I needed to wrap up a few old projects.  I just finished piecing my half squares on point quilt.

Now for the big decision, do I want to hand quilt?   I’d love to, but the size has me a little worried – 66″ x 84″.  Will it take a year?  One thing is for sure, I am not fast at hand quilting.

When I look at the quilt close up and I see so many fabrics that I love… that mustard fabric makes me swoon…  I think I might love to work on it for that long.  So it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Since it will be on my family room sofa, I could take the easy route and tie it.  Oops.  Is that a swear word among good quilters?

Either way, I’m pretty sure I won’t have this quilt machined.

The other project I’ve finally gotten around to finishing is a quilt that has gathered dust on my shelf even longer.

It’s a BRIGHT and funky quilt for my son’s bed.  I started the project a while back and it was going along well until I realized I hadn’t bought enough fabric for the sashing/border.  I guess that’s the pitfalls of making up a pattern as you go.  The missing fabric was a Michael Miller lightweight denim.  I looked high and low for the fabric and finally gave up and quit working on the quilt.

But in the spirit of Make it Do… and of finish what I start…  I decided to find a different fabric for the border.  It made me a little sick to to it, but now that it’s all pieced and just needs the borders, I kind of like the way it looks when I lay it all out with the new fabric for the top and bottom borders.

The blocks are inspired by a quilt in the book The Quilts of Gee’s Bend and I love how unpredictable they are- kinda, sorta a bull’s eye.  The more I think about it, using a different fabric is perfect for the spirit of a Gee’s Bend quilt.

It’s nice to finish up a few niggling projects.

Next up:  Maybe The Farmer’s Wife, since my friend Amber asked if I’d like to make it with a group of other local quilters, and I’ve got a new quilt I’m designing that I’m really excited about.