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!

QOV label

I've been working on the label for my Quilt of Valor. The website requests that you write "Presented to:" and they will fill in the recipient's name later.

I'm dedicating this quilt to my Great-Uncle Mike, who fought during World War II. He was a full-of-life Italian, always the life of the party at family gatherings. My fondest memory of him was when he *attempted* to teach me how to waltz at my Uncle Mark's wedding. It was not a success! LOL!

To make the label, first I typed out what I wanted in a Word document. I used Kristen font at size 22. Then I printed it onto plain paper and used my light-box to trace it onto a piece of Kona snow that I had leftover from my nephew's quilt. I pressed under a 1/4 inch seam allowance on each side, and now it's ready to be hand-stitched to the back of the quilt.

Happy stitching!

Happy Mail!

Look what the mailman brought me today:

My Quilts of Valor quilt, all quilted and sent back to me by Leisa, a long-arm quilter who I got connected with from the QOV website. The pattern for the quilt was a freebie from Judy at Patchwork Times. Leisa did a fabulous job on the quilting! I did a little happy dance when I opened the box :)

In each of the centers of the blocks, Leisa quilted a little flag with one star and some stripes.

In the "frame" of each block, she quilted a star in each corner, connected with wavy lines.

In the inner  (red) border, Leisa quilted different words such as thank you...

...USA, freedom, liberty, etc. There's a star in between each word.

This little corner was too small for a word, so she made a cute little flag.

For the outer border, she stitched around each large star then quilted swirly lines in between each star.

When my husband saw the quilt, he said it's beautiful and then he asked me where in the house we're hanging it up. Ummmm, we're not. It's being sent to a soldier!

Now it just needs a label and some binding.

Happy stitching!

Design Wall Monday February 4, 2013

This weekend, I whipped up 5 blocks for Alycia's block drive. All the blocks that are collected will be made into quilts for Quilts of Valor, which donates quilts to members of the military who have been touched by war. Alycia has supplied the directions for this block drive. It's a log cabin variation...easy peasy! I set up a temporary design wall to photograph the blocks by putting a piece of batting over my ancient cardboard cutting board and standing it up. The batting is only big enough for one row of blocks, so here are three of them.

Here are the other 2 blocks for the block drive. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the outer ring of fabric on the right block has a white background with "USA" repeated in lines. For the center of each block, I used some fabrics from an old Moda Charm Pack called "red white and bold."

It's not too late to make some blocks for Alycia's block drive. For every 5 that you send to her by March 8th, your name gets put into a drawing for a beautiful fat quarter pack. And QOV is definitely a good cause!

I also got some more units sewn together for block A of Easy Street. Since I'm using these as my leaders/enders, the units come together pretty quickly, in between other projects.

Go visit Judy to see lots of other design walls.

Happy stitching!

Calling all Quilters

Alycia is hosting another "Block Drive" to make into quilts for Quilts of Valor (QOV). According to their website, the mission of QOV is to "cover all combat service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing Quilts of Valor."

To participate, you just need to make blocks in the pattern Alycia has on her blog. It's a simplified log cabin. You can either make your block(s) in a patriotic colorway or in plaids.

To further entice you to make a few blocks for this worthy cause, a gorgeous fat quarter pack has been donated by Vicki Welsh. For every five blocks that you send to Alycia by March 8th, your name will be put into a drawing for the fat quarter pack.

See here for all the exciting details!

Happy stitching!

Design Wall Monday ~ MLK Day

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! I've got a few things on my "design wall" this week.

First, I finished my top for Quilts of Valor. It's so long that you can just barely see my husband's toe peeking under the border! I used the free pattern that Judy gave out on her blog, but I eliminated the middle 1" border. Although I had plenty of scraps for the main part of the quilt, I did go buy some yardage for the two borders. And I had some leftover to add to my patriotic fabric bin :) I've had such a fun time making this quilt. Red, white, and blue is one of my favorite color combinations, and it was a joy to use many different patriotic fabrics. I know this isn't much, but I hope this quilt will help a soldier to know that we do care; we appreciate what they are doing for us; their sacrifices do not go unnoticed.

While I added the borders to the QOV, I made some more units for block A of Easy Street as leaders/enders. The 4-patches sewn to the double bricks are rotated from the ones I made last week, since you need some of both for this block.

After finishing my QOV, I got to work on the 1st border for my Fibonacci's Challenge quilt. Here's some information about that quilt. After laying out some fabrics for my border, I decided I didn't like it, so I revamped my plan.

Since this border can only have rectangles, I sewed two 1 1/2" strips of creams and golds together, then cut into 2 1/2" pieces. Then I framed them with green 1 1/2" strips. So the finished width of each piece will be 1" and the finished blocks will be 4" squares. I will be alternating green and red blocks; here are the 8 green blocks I have made.

I'm hoping to finish this border later on today, since I'm off school for Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday.

You can see what's on other quilters' design walls at Judy's blog.

Happy stitching!

QOV and Easy Street Progress

This week, in between going back to work after two weeks off, getting a haircut, going to a parents' meeting for younger son's basketball, and spending 2 1/2  hours in the emergency room with younger son who sprained his ankle at basketball, I was able to sew the seven rows of my quilt for Quilts of Valor (QOV) together. Please ignore my husband's hands at the top of the quilt and his feet at the bottom. When a quilt top gets this big, he is my "design wall" ~ LOL! I just need to cut and piece the borders, then sew them onto the center of the quilt.

While I worked on the QOV quilt, I worked a bit on Easy Street, using it as leaders and enders for the QOV. At first I was going to assemble Easy Street one block at a time, but then I decided I'd rather piece together two units for all the blocks I'm going to make. Here are half of the 4-patches sewn onto half of the double bricks. The pattern calls for half of the 4-patches to be sewn on one way and the other half sewn on with them rotated. I had hoped to have my entire Easy Street quilt top finished by the end of January, but I'm not so sure that's going to happen now. When I have a break from my job at a school, I tend to forget that life gets pretty busy during the school year! I'm just happy to keep this as my leader/ender project for now. I know it will come together soon. I'm not whining, but these last two steps are pretty involved :)

I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Happy stitching!

January First Friday UFO and QOV photos

Well, after not having any success the past few days getting my photos to upload onto blogger using internet explorer, I tried installing google chrome as an internet browser. It finally worked. Here's the latest block I made for my All Star UFO. When I first saw the white background fabric with the eagle, I knew I wanted to fussy cut an eagle and frame it for one of these blocks.

 Here's a closeup of the eagle.

Some progress on my Quilts of Valor quilt, using the free pattern that Judy generously gave on her blog. You'll notice the small pieces of paper in the upper left corner of each row. Before I started sewing together the rows, I laid out all the blocks on the floor in the great room to make sure I didn't have a large cluster of the same fabric. I'm sewing one row together at a time, marking the rows as I go. I simply write "Row 1" (or whichever number it is) then safety pin it to the fabric.

I haven't had any more time to work on this. My extended family came over last night for our Christmas  celebration, so I've been busy this weekend cleaning and cooking. I'm hoping to finish the last few rows today, in between loads of laundry. Maybe even get the rows all sewn together? Sadly, today is my last day of break before we head back to school tomorrow. That of course means less time for me to sew. I'll have to make the best of my day :)

Edited January 7: I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Happy stitching!

First Friday UFO...maybe

Happy First Friday of January. I was hoping to show you the block I made for my All Star UFO and my progress on the quilt I'm making for Quilts of Valor, but Blogger is acting up. It won't let me upload any photos from my computer!

So I'll just tell you that in all the excitement of Easy Street, I was able to make another block for the All Star quilt. If you're new here, I'll give you the background of the "First Friday UFO" posts. A few months ago, a local quilt shop was hosting an "almost free" Block-Of-the-Month (BOM). To participate, you had to buy the fabrics for the first month's block. Then if you brought the completed 1st block back to the store during the next month, you got the 2nd block's fabrics for free. I was thinking of joining, because one of the colorways was patriotic, and I love patriotic quilts. Then I remembered that I had a patriotic UFO sitting in my armoire. So instead of joining that quilt shop's BOM, I decided to do my own BOM and make one block in my All Star quilt per month. On the first Friday of each month, I'm posting photos of the blocks. To see the other blocks in this quilt, click on the "All Star" label at the end of this post or on the left sidebar of the blog.

Since I've been off school this week, I was able to continue working on my quilt for Quilts of Valor. I was hoping to finish it on New Year's Day, but that didn't happen. My kids and husband wanted to eat! LOL. I have finished piecing all the blocks, and I got 4 rows sewn together.

I'll try to upload those photos later today.

Happy stitching!

Quilts of Valor New Year's Day Sit and Sew

Wow, this must be a record for me: three posts in one day!

Yesterday when I was looking at some of the blogs who were linked to Judy's Design Wall Monday, I read about the "1st Annual Quilts of Valor New Year's Day Sit and Sew." This is an invitation to quilters to make a quilt top for Quilts of Valor (QOV), an organization that gives quilts to soldiers wounded in war. Then I saw that Judy had posted a free pattern to make a QOV. I decided at the last minute to jump in, since I have lots of patriotic fabrics which I bought for my All Star quilt. This will be my first QOV quilt.

This large bin is full of my patriotic fabrics. Yesterday I looked through it to find the fabrics I want to use, then I ironed them and started cutting my strips.

Here are my strips sewn together into sets, ready to be cut into units for the blocks.

So far I have finished all the blocks with a blue "frame." This photo is just a representation of what I've done. I'm hoping to get the red-framed blocks pieced tonight also, but I needed to take a little break from the studio.

I'm really liking the way these blocks look. This is a great pattern for this project. Quick and easy and fabulous-looking when you use a lot of scrappy fabrics! I'm so thankful to Judy for giving us this pattern on her blog. This would also be a good pattern for a new quilter to learn some basics, since it doesn't have any angles.

Happy stitching!