Hexie Stars Update

Happy Valentine's Day! It's been snowing here all afternoon. My husband took the dog for a walk to the creek in the back of our property, but I'm quite content to sit here in the living room, enjoying the nice fire he built for me!

I've been slow stitching on my second star for my Hexie Stars quilt. Here is the center rosette. The center looks really dark in this photo, but it's the same Kaffe Fassett grape shot cotton that I used for the center of my first star.

 Here is one of the rosettes for the star point. I have two finished and I'm working on the third.

 None of the rosettes are sewn to each other, but this gives you an idea of how this star is shaping up:

What slow stitching have you been up to lately? I'm linking up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Sarah's HeLP for Hexie-aholics.

Happy stitching!

Hexi Star #1 finished

I've finally finished the first star for my Hexi Stars quilt. Well, I actually finished it a few weeks ago, but I'm just now getting a chance to post it!

We had a little plumbing issue, so we had to take almost everything out of my quilting studio for the plumber to get at the plumbing behind the walls in there. Thankfully, there wasn't any water damage! However, everything is piled up on the ping-pong table and the family room floor, so I'm a bit unorganized with the quilting supplies right now. Instead of spending my time working on quilts, I've been taking some time to organize and purge everything. Since the studio is basically cleared out, I do not want to put anything back in there that I don't actually want or need! My husband got the new sheetrock put up this weekend and he is mudding it as I type. Next we need to paint, then I can start moving everything back in.

I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Sarah's HeLP for Hexie-aholics (jump over to Sarah's to wish her a happy birthday...she's offering up a little "prize" in honor of her birthday).

Happy stitching!

Slow Stitching

Hello, Friends!

Now that the craziness of the first few months are school are over (including Parent-Teacher Conferences this past week), I feel like I can take a deep breath, relax, and check in with my quilty friends!

Although I haven't blogged since August, I have been taking time in the evenings and weekends to do some stitching. Even if I can only find 15 minutes to stitch one seam, I find that hand stitching is so relaxing, and I prefer to keep my hands busy when I'm watching TV ~ otherwise, watching TV seems like a waste of time to me!

I'm almost finished with the first star for my Hexi Stars EPP quilt:

 

Since the star is getting larger, I've been mostly working on it at home. When I'm out and about (or riding in the car), I've been basting hexies for the next star, although I don't have any photos of those yet.

 

I have been so focused on this quilt, I haven't really made any progress on my hexi QOV quilt or my redwork Winter Wonderland quilt. Not that I mind...none of these 3 quilts have any sort of deadline. They are for my pure enjoyment of slow stitching!

 

What slow stitching project(s) have you been working on lately?

 

Happy stitching!

 

I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count.

Hexagon Slow Stitching

I've gotten a bit farther on both of my hexie EPP projects. I stitched the first two star points onto this center for my hexie stars quilt (using 1" hexies):

When I started to work on the fourth star point for my QOV quilt (using 2" hexies), I realized that I hadn't basted all of those hexies yet. So first I basted all the hexies I'll need for this star point, then I started stitching them together. All the outer hexies are stitched to the center, and four of the outer hexies are stitched to each other:

I'm linking up to:

Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching

Life Under Quilts

Sarah Did It - HeLP for Hexie-aholics

 

 

Happy stitching!

Slow Stitching

This week, I finished the 3rd point for my QOV star quilt!

I also got a bit further on my hexie stars quilt:

I thought it would be fun to compare the size of one rosette of the hexie stars (1" hexies) with one rosette of the QOV star (2" hexies). Here's how they look side-by-side:

And finally, I worked a bit more on my embroidery for Winter Wonderland. I've started stitching the large snowman:

 

I'm linking up to:

Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching

Life Under Quilts

 

Happy (slow) stitching!



Hand Stitching

My 18-year-old daughter and I have been enjoying watching some TV shows together while we do handwork; she knits and I either do EPP or embroidery. I've started the third point for my QOV Star quilt:

I've also made some progress on my current block for Winter Wonderland. This fabric is about 20" X 22", but I think I'm supposed to cut it down after the embroidery is finished. Since I'm still embroidering, I haven't really paid attention to that part of the directions!

I'm linking up to:

Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching

Life Under Quilts

 

 

Happy stitching!



Design Wall Monday Update

Hello! Yesterday I promised that I would show you some of what I've been working on lately. You may remember, before my "quilting drought," that I started an EPP hexagon quilt with patriotic fabrics. My goal is to make a large star quilt to donate to Quilts of Valor. I have gotten some work done on that since I last wrote about it. The hexagons are 2" per side, so 4" going straight across. The center measures 28" across:

The first two star points are finished, although they are not actually attached to the center yet:

This has become too large of a project to really take anywhere to stitch on, so this summer, I decided to start another EPP hexagon quilt.

I'm using Kaffe Fassett's delicious fabrics, with his "grape" colored shot cotton for the center. I have one little rosette finished. Eventually I plan on making some stars out of these hexies, so for now, I'm calling this "Hexie Stars". For this project, I'm using 1" hexies. Here are some more hexies, basted and ready to go. I basted these while in the car on the way to my in-laws' farm. Basting doesn't require too much precision stitching, so it's a great way to while away the 5-hour trip.

Shelley at Elsie's Girl had a fabulous suggestion: buy a Fiskars hexagon punch (available in the scrapbooking section of your local craft store) and use it to punch out all those magazine subscription inserts. The inserts are a great weight for EPP papers, and much cheaper than buying the papers pre-cut.

 

Besides these, I've started a new leaders/enders project. (If you're not familiar with leader/enders, here's a description by Bonnie Hunter.) I first fell in love with this pixelated heart quilt a few years ago, and kept it in the back of my mind. Then Sharon brought a pixelated heart quilt which she had made to quilt guild, and I knew I needed to make one soon. So I've been cutting out 2.5 inch squares of low volume/neutral fabrics for the background. I have a few sewn together so far:

Hopefully I'll have this done in time for Valentine's Day, but we'll see!

 

I have actually been working on some other things as well, lately, but the laundry is calling, so I'll have to tell you about those on another day.

 

I'm linking up to Judy at Patchwork Times and Jessica at Life Under Quilts.

 

Happy stitching!



Happy Birthday, USA!

Happy Independence Day to all my fellow Americans! In honor of this special holiday, I thought I'd show you the latest work that I've done on my hexie QOV quilt.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Happy stitching!

I'm Baaaaack!!!!!

Hello again!

I didn't plan on taking a two-month break from blogging, but it was a crazy spring: both boys ran track (one high school and one middle school), so many weeks we had 4 track meets per week; plus the normal craziness of end of the school year stuff when you work in an elementary school; plus my oldest child graduated from high school; plus we had out-of-town relatives visit for the graduation festivities; plus we got a new puppy two weeks ago.

Isn't she cute? Her name is Jetta (we just kept the name the shelter had given her) and she's a black lab/Chesapeake retriever mix. She is now 12 weeks old.

Although I haven't been blogging lately, I have been working on some quilt projects.

Here's the latest on my patriotic hexie quilt for Quilts of Valor. My daughter and I have been watching old DVD's of the TV show Monk, and I add a few hexies while we watch. Yesterday I had to pick up something for the puppy, and so I took a detour to a quilt shop that I've only been to once before. I bought a few more patriotic fabrics that I haven't seen at any of my local quilt shops. This is a perfect time to stock up on patriotic fabrics :)

Edited: The flag embroidery pattern came from Carole Samples' book, Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches.

I just realized that I need to take some photos of the other things I've been working on, so I guess I'll have to post those later on.

Happy stitching!

Hexie organization

I've decided that I will need to be organized with my hexie project. I had this basket with wooden dividers that was being under-used in a closet, so I cleaned it out and claimed it for hexies.

In the back, you can see one blue hexie that's ready to be sewn on. In the two empty slots, I will put white hexies and embroidered hexies. On the right are my 2" templates from Paper Pieces and a package of small binder clips.

In the front, I have my red and white threads. Then some red hexies that are ready to go in the quilt. Next is a coffee mug with a small pair of scissors inside. I'm also using this mug to put my scraps and thread clippings into. As a side note, I got the mug when I graduated from junior high school many years ago! The mug never had a handle, so it fits perfectly in this spot. To the right of the mug is a spot to put hexies that I've basted but not pressed yet.

I've sewn three red hexies onto the white flag embroidered hexie, but they are not sewn to each other yet.

Happy stitching!

First Hexies Basted

Monday, when I was looking at some Design Walls, I came across Sarah at sarah did it! She makes hexie quilts, and on the 17th of each month, she hosts a linky party for people to share their progress on hexie projects (called HeLP for Hexie-aholics). Today I'm linking up there for the first time.

Sarah and I emailed a bit, and she gave me two great tips: (1.) Simple math for cutting fabric squares: add 1/4" to the hexie size and double it. 2" hexies need squares at least 4.5" and (2.) when basting the fabric, use tiny binder clips to hold the seam allowances down. This is working well for me.

After looking at some different tutorials online, I decided not to baste the fabric to the paper templates. I'm just basting each corner to the seam allowance next to it, then taking my needle over to the next corner. Two advantages are that you don't have to remove the basting stitches after you sew your hexies together and the paper will be reusable.

I finished my flag embroidery and basted that hexie plus four red ones. I'm excited to have started this journey!

 

Happy stitching!

Miscellaneous Design Wall Stuff

First up, I sewed the label to the back of my QOV.

Then I made the presentation case for my QOV (I had almost forgotten that I needed to make one!) I didn't have enough yardage for the body, so I just HAD to stop at the quilt shop the other day on my way home from work. I ended up buying all three of the fabrics for the case, plus a few fat quarters of other patriotic fabric for my new hexagon quilt. The blue star fabric that makes up the body of the case looks like denim in real life ~ very fun.

Sunday, I got some stitching done on my first embroidery block for my new hexie quilt. You know how much I love Carole Samples' book, Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches, for embellishing the seams of my crazy quilt blocks! But in the back of that book, she has several pages of motifs that could be used in the center of crazy patches. This waving flag was one of her designs. I traced all of the flag-pole, but I won't need it to be so long for the 2" hexagon that I'm using, so I didn't stitch all the way to the bottom.

 

Thursday after work, I ordered some hexagon paper templates from Paper Pieces. I was very surprised to get them in the mail on Saturday! They seem like a good quality paper. I haven't had time to baste any of my fabrics to them yet, so I can't show you any pictures of that.

 

Judy has more design walls up.

 

Happy stitching!

First Hexagon Project

Susan at CQ4fun is starting a new hexagon quilt, and she's invited people to join her. She is making it a redwork quilt by sewing scrappy red hexies into flowers, with white centers that have embroidery. I was intrigued by the idea, especially since I've never made a hexagon quilt before. But let's face it, I need to start another quilt as much as I need a hole in the top of my head! I tried to be strong. I really did. But I realized that resistance is futile!

As much as I love red and white quilts (I have made 2 red and white wall-hangings and I have 4 red and white lap-sized UFO projects, including my Winter Wonderland redwork quilt), I'm going to make my quilt a bit different than Susan's.

I've had this Moda "red white and bold" charm pack of patriotic fabrics for several years. The 5" squares were too small to use in my Quilt of Valor, but they will be perfect for 2" hexagons. I also have other patriotic scraps. So I'm planning on making another QOV quilt. I'm going to sew the hexies into a star shape, adding some patriotic embroidery to some of the white hexies.

If you want to sew along, Susan is going to be posting different embroidery designs to fit inside 2" hexies each week. You don't have to use them, they are just suggestions.

PaperPieces looks like a good resource for hexies and other English paper piecing templates. They have a free downloadable hexagon graph paper so you can design your own quilt. They also have cutting guides to see how large of a square of fabric you need for different-sized hexagons, and how many you can get out of different pieces of fabric. I've never dealt with this company before, so I do not know how their service is. And no, I am not affiliated with them in any way.

Of course, since I've never done paper piecing before, I might decide I hate it after I sew a few hexies together. In that case, I'll make a little mug rug and call it done!

Happy stitching!