Sunday, 10 June 2012

Sunday tipples

Scrummy 5 pounds per metre backing fabric. All the colours will camouflage dubious hand quilting!

Potential quilting pattern for one of my hexie projects.  I think I need a random pattern rather than quilting inside the seams of the shapes-lines of quilting across the seams will stabilise the hand sewing and take strain off the thousands of lines of hand sewing.



Pattern study

I did a walk round at work for 20 minutes with my camera looking for inspirational patterns.  I work in a sign manufacturing company.  Unedited pictures of what I found-they will join my pattern archive for future reference.  Forgive the dubious quality of some of the pictures, the lighting isn't good!





Tuesday, 5 June 2012

Hexagon Jubilee

I have an amazing ability to ignore boring domesticity, honed over many years and do my own thing. Being single helps, no pressure!  I sat up until past 1am the last two nights watching films and sewing in hexie papers.  I have a push to get the 'six-sets' sewn up as I want to finish piecing DFG by Christmas, so I can layer and sew over the holiday. Second tin full, third on the way.

Not sure I will make it as I have to cut and paper tack all the stone 'paths' yet, then do a single row border of leaves/bushes round the edge.  All 440 inches of it!



Two hours late last night was spent cutting hexie papers from printouts-I use old A4 envelopes saved for me at work with three extra sheets inside so each shape cut yields five hexagons. Envelopes provide the right thickness, not too difficult to sew through when tacking and resilient enough to be re-used about 4 times.  I recon I cut around 1500, still not enough for what I have to do.   I have lots of 1/2'' diamonds printed out too-I don't need these yet, enough was enough, my arm was starting to cramp after 2 hours cutting card!  As the diamonds are so small I will try doing them on the cutting mat with the rotary cutter.


I spent an hour selecting the appropriate centres yesterday for all the sets to be assembled: it was strangely relaxing. The majority of the centres are to be yellow or black and some have opposite accents on the colour wheel.

Looking at what I have, I can announce
POTENTIAL PROJECT 29:

A variation on 28, made with all the browns and creams that won't fit into any other brightly coloured project I have on the go. Another row round each flower, brown surrounded by cream, cream by brown and everything on a navy ground.


When I went to bed it's only because I thought I should, I read until nearly 2am. I am half way though  The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville. It's fluff: I appreciate that the idea of this prize is to award women novelists who write accessible works but I can't yet see why it won the Orange Prize. The characters are quite well drawn, but surely a good writer shouldn't have to continually use italics to get their point across: it is annoying!   I thought you used punctuation to create emphasis. It even goes so far as to omit speech marks. Horror!  It promises to have something about quilting in it, much to my delight, so I will stick with it.

The last book I attempted was By The River Piedra I Sat Down  and Wept. I hear such praise for this author but the twin themes of religion and lurve were too much for this old cynic. It will be off to the Bookcrossing shelf at Starbuck's Horsham on my next visit.   If you live in West Sussex, there are four shelves of FREE books here, at the top of the stairs.

Sunday, 3 June 2012

When the morning gathers a rainbow........

The sun has been shining, so I took the big box of random hexies to work every day, sat outside at lunchtime on the step 'meiditated' away.  It really did the trick, much better than reading for a lunch break de-stress: sadly only for half an hour a day!  I end up with some odd shapes as I stitch, there are several on the go at once to stop me getting bored.

In the evenings I finished the red corner squaring section for DFG and took the tacking out to rescue and recycle the papers.  Not my favourite job! 

Yesterday when I came home there was a racket going on in my weeping birch tree-some blue tits have fledged, they must have been nesting in the hedge that is attacking pedestrians!  I was going to cut it this weekend but I can't possibly do that now as these little fluff balls with be frightened off-they are about the size of a small hens egg.

Saturday, 26 May 2012

Time for a dip

A closeup of DFG pond centre: water themed fabrics surrounded by reeds, stones and decking, to be enhanced by the quilting later on. Most of the reeds and stones are found elsewhere as path elements.  I have been over this dozens of times taking papers out of various sections, I just found a paper I left in the middle!


Thursday, 24 May 2012

Six sided stock take


I have been assessing the three hexie projects on the go- Random Hexie, Darwin's Flower Garden (DFG), and Rainbow Hexie.
The tins are six-sets for 'flowers' to be made up, though I won't do these unless I need them to finish DFG, I only have to 'square' the edges on this now.
If I don't need these six-sets for DFG they can be broken down for the other projects.
There are fresh cuts of six-sets plus extras  for the random and rainbow hexies in the plastic bin.
These are all the flowers I have already sew up-many more than I need to complete the 'Darwin's Flower Garden". 

I have taken out the really ugly ones and duplicates to drop into the Random hexie. where their beauty will be enhanced!

I feel there is another project to add to the list to use these 'good' DFG flowers up.  
NUMBER 28!!
Here goes: a more traditional setting, each 'flower' with a 12 piece surround, but in leaf fabrics....the surrounds will be the same fabric for each centre, mock-up in random greens shown......







Note to self:  YOU WILL NOT START THIS in 2012! 

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Inching along

Time to put the strips together to see how much more I need to do for the rainbow hexie.  The shapes are just under an inch per side- at a guess to make a 6ft  square double bed topper it needs to be just over twice as big as this across the widest part.  I have a few more strip sets to sew up, then it will go away for a while until I have stitched in more papers.

Sunday, 20 May 2012

Darwin's Flower Garden

I realised I haven't posted a picture of this-I'm working on 'squaring the corners' at  the moment. red section. It is far bigger than I anticipated as I started cutting the hexies than came up with the design. Pond and decking in the middle, each set of paths is a different stone design

So many ideas, so little time

I had another idea for a quilt. The book man at work left this  with the stack.  As I am a closet Star Wars Geek, I very nearly bought it.  Now I wish I had, the blocky nature of the lego figures would have made a good 'people' quilt.  If any one makes a quilt after reading this, please send me a picture, as I doubt I will ever make it.  My boys are in their 30's!

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Rainbows after dark

I have been working on the rainbow hexie in the evenings this week. I found it goes together quicker if I sew the colour strips then join the strips.  There are less ends with the potential to unravel, at least.  I'm going to try doing the Random Hexie this way too.

Last weekend was spent clearing away the mess: I have finished cutting-the strips, squares and triangles, all stashed away.  I had to rearrange the spare room to get to the various boxes I needed!
I got rid of some uglies-these are what I call ugly. Pinky girlie eeews.  I am generally happy when I buy a mystery bundle form one of my favourite Internet shops, Lady Sew and Sew. Not this time, so I chopped it up for strings and fillers. Still not small enough for me!

I  have space for the sewing machine projects now.  I will be layering a quilt this week (can't post about it yet, its a gift and they will see!)

Friday, 4 May 2012

London

I finally finished this book, it took around 2 months-1300 pages though!  The plot follows the lives of several families through time from pre-Roman London to the present, linking the families, politics and the geographical development of the city to real events.  It was fascinating finding out why areas of London were named and developed as they did.  The book is broken into manageable bites of around 70 pages and has a full list of characters in the front. If you like well written historical novels, give this a go.

Friday, 27 April 2012

Number 27.

I have come up with a project for my scrap strings that involves a little more planning than the usual random  'grab it and sew it design' like Spiders Web, so this has to go on the list too. With all I have to do already I will forget about it if I don't document the thoughts here!  I was looking through my books yesterday and found this gem that I sourced from a charity shop for £1.50 a while ago.  I  think it's out of print in the UK but is available in the US from the authors website, link below.

I did a quick pencil sketch to lay out a landscape design using one simple block that you can see the detail of here on Margaret J Miller's website.  When I have done some colour sketches  I will post them.   I can't photograph the six boxes of strings I have to use (plus another big bag yet to be colour sorted) as they're in the spare room under a lot of 'stored' items!

Sunday, 22 April 2012

25 and 26?

Every time I cut, I add something extra to the stash.  There are lots of 1.5" strips for a lego quilt, as here over at Lazy Gal Quilting-I love her colours.

These size strips will also go to make a quilt from Judy Martins  Log Cabin quilt book.  I haven't decided which one yet-you can see images of quilters work on her viewer pages.

                                                       So, I suppose I need to include these in my 'to do' list as the strips are begin cut 'with intent'. Oh dear. In the effort to get organised I'm getting overwhelmed!

Thursday, 19 April 2012

The smallest room, the smallest crumbs

I made this curtain from the teeniest crumbs in 2006. It's rather stiff as its pieced onto muslin and there are so many seams in each 4" square but that doesn't matter as its there to look at not be moved across the window!  This is my favourite kind of piecing, random and not accurate on purpose, totally relaxing to do.

Twenty four!

This one was tucked away so far I had forgotten it completely. I still haven't found it, only the picture!   It was made from pre-cut squares that weren't accurate, about 7 years ago-lesson learnt, don't trust anyone elses cutting!  It will probably be a quilt back for one of my own machine stitched quilts as the piecing isn't something I'd inflict on anyone else and there is a lot of bulk at the seams.  I do like the way the colours move, so I will use it soon. Ish!

Monday, 16 April 2012

Todays Total: 23 UFOs

I remembered another one, a half completed door curtain for the front door I had forgotten!

picture to follow!

Sunday, 15 April 2012

Sunday blues

See, I'm motivated!!  I'd like to stay at home and do this until its  finished tomorrow, but I'd better get to work, quilting is an expensive hobby!
oh, and I forgot
  • my 'trilobite evolution' idea for a quilt-ideas from earlier here....

  • MY OWN quilt thats going to be called Event Horizon
Thats 22 now..........