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!



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!

Friday night stitching

My 15-year-old daughter loves fairy tales *almost* as much as I do. Lately, we've been watching some of the different movie versions of Cinderella. A few weeks ago we watched "Ever After" with Drew Barrymore as Cinderella and Anjelica Huston as a really good evil step-mother, and last night we watched "A Cinderella Story" with Hilary Duff. While we watched last night, I worked on a few projects.

First I cut out some of the pieces for my McKenna Ryan mini-quilt. Cutting those little curves and notches got to be a bit mundane, so after a while, I switched over to some hand-sewing.

After working on my black CQJP project a few other nights this week, I wanted a change of color. Plus, I wanted to be able to just mindlessly sew without thinking about what stitch combination to do for each seam. So I pulled out my current Winter Wonderland block and made the snowflakes. When I trace these patterns, I use a very fine red Micron pen (I think it's a 005). That way if a stitch is slightly off the drawn line, it's not obvious like it would be if I traced with a black pen. I don't like to use a washable marking pen for this purpose because those are so thick.

Today is the first Saturday in months that we haven't had to go sit in a school gymnasium for a basketball game or track meet. I love that my boys are involved in sports, but I'm glad for a Saturday at home. I have some laundry going and now I'm off to do a bit of sewing on my Fibonacci quilt.

Happy stitching!

Winter Wonderland Redwork WIP

Good morning! I woke up at 6:00 on a day off so I could sign up for a half marathon in March, in a town 15 minutes from my house. Last year the race filled up in an hour. So happy I got a spot. Then I checked at Quiltville for Bonnie's latest Easy Street clue. How exciting this is getting!!! Tomorrow she will give us our last clue.

Whenever we go to the Farm, I have lots of time for hand sewing and reading; our trip over Christmas was no exception. Besides finishing my November and December CQJP blocks, I finished up one of the redwork blocks for my "Winter Wonderland" quilt, a Work In Progress (WIP). This block is called "Snowball Fight". I'm a bit frustrated with the creases in the fabric. I have pressed it and steamed it and pressed it and steamed it and I thought having it in the embroidery hoop would help, but it's still there. Hopefully quilting it will get rid of some of that?

Since I haven't shown any other parts of this quilt, here's some background: Two years ago, I saw a quilt called “Winter Wonderland” hanging up at one of my local quilt shops. (Have I ever told you that I’m lucky enough to have 6 awesome quilt shops that are between 5 and 45 minutes away from my house?) It’s a redwork pattern by Crab*apple Hill. Since I love red and I love embroidery, I wanted to try it, with its fun snowmen. This is a great project to take when we travel. I only need to bring the block, one skein of red embroidery floss, and my needle, scissors, and hoop. (No, I do not have any affiliation with the Crab*apple Hill company.)

Since I know the embroidery will take me awhile, I slowly make one or two of the pieced blocks in between other projects.

Here are the blocks I’ve finished so far:

Toboggan Ride

Snowflake verse

Skier

Snowman Family (taken on a different day...bad lighting)

                                     
The three blocks above will finish to 6 inch squares.

These two blocks will be 9 inches finished.

This is a 12 inch block (finished size).

Here's another 12 inch block (finished).

You've seen some of these same fabrics in my Christmas "Easy Street" mystery quilt! I naturally went overboard in buying fabrics for this "Winter Wonderland," so I had plenty to choose from for "Easy Street."

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

Happy stitching!