Hand Piecing – Page 3 – Kelly's Kwilts

Hexagon Diamonds Update

I only have 1 more diamond to put together and I’ll be able to attach the next row to the main body of the quilt. I might pick a different half diamond though since it is using the same fabric as one of the diamonds. They are all ready, just need the 5 black pieces added on and those are fairly easy.

Spent the afternoon working on tshirts for my sister’s preschool. I do the shirts for the staff. They added 3 colors this time, the lime, orange and hot pink – the others are their usual colors. As long as I have them finished by Saturday I’m golden, my sister will be coming over and I can send them with her. Otherwise Alex and I will just have to take a trip out to see Aunt Kimmie!

I’m such a bonehead! Last night I was working on my hand quilting and bent a needle. So at bedtime I went in my office and was looking for the tub where I have an old mint container where I toss all my broken/bent needles/pins, old rotary blades, etc. As I’m rooting around for the container my finger hit the rotary cutter with a pinking blade. It’s not too bad of a cut, just a funky shape because of the pinking blade. I need to put that thing somewhere else! I’m also getting another mint container from the hubby, to keep with my hand work in the living room. Very happy with the way the hand quilting is coming, I need to start thinking about what backing to use for my hexagon quilt so I can get it basted and ready to put in the hoop. I think I need to buy some batting too, need to see if I have anything large enough. I have a packaged one, that was supposed to be for our flannel bed quilt, but now I’m thinking that since that one is all flannel (even the backing!) that I don’t want any batting in it. I think we’ll be warm enough without it. So I’ll be able to use that batting for the hexagon diamonds or the hexagon quilt, it will work with either but probably be better for hexagon diamonds since the batting is king sized and hexi diamonds is going to be queen sized. Oh heck, I’ll just get some batting at Joann’s for the hexagon quilt, now that decision is made I just need to figure out a backing!

Guild meeting is tomorrow night, can’t wait to show off my first hand quilting piece!!!

Design Wall Monday – 2/11/13

I’ve been working hard the last week to get more put together on Hexagon Diamonds. I officially have 3 rows completed and I’ve started working on the fourth row. All the pieces I need are basted and ready to be sewn into diamonds. I’m hoping to have this fourth row completed by mid week, just so I can get started on the next one! There are 13 rows in the quilt and if my calculations are correct from the EQ yardage sheet, 2,477 hexagons.

I ordered a few things from 123 Stitch last week, some more of my thimble pads, some thread heaven, ultra thimble and a book of cross stitch ornaments. I’m thinking they might be nice to work on while we are camping. I like to have multiple projects when we go on vacation, mainly because after awhile you want to work on something different. I thought these might be good for Xmas presents this year. If I don’t get them done, it’s ok there’s always next year! The tracking shows that it is delivered, which means it’s in the mailbox. So hubby will bring it in when he gets home from work, I have to wait until 6! I might take a walk with Alex when he gets up from his nap to get the mail, we’ll see how cold and windy it is when he gets up.

I need to get working on the order for my sister’s preschool/day care, I’ll be back soon!

Odds and Ends

Decided to take a trip out to the nearest Hobby Lobby today. I was not impressed. There was a lot of frames, flower “stuff” and knick-knacks. Not much of a fabric selection for quilting, a few cross stitch kits that I would love to get, but they were $42 each and I just couldn’t justify it right now. I didn’t find any of the items I was looking for, which means I’ll need to order them online now. I’ve been looking for some vinyl numbers (years) for a project that I found on Pinterest. I finally remembered that one of my friends has a cricut and I’ve asked her if she can do what I need. I doubt I’ll go back there, especially since it’s almost a 45 minute drive from my house.

Back before Christmas I was playing with a new Go die I had ordered and decided to use up some scraps to make a runner for the island. While I finished the top, I never got it quilted before the holidays and just put it on the island as a top. I managed to quilt it in January but hadn’t sewn the binding down to the back. I also had a pile of additional pieces cut out to make a smaller runner for the dining room table and got that put together and quilted over the weekend. So my Super Bowl project was sewing down binding on them. Took me a few days to get all that binding sewn down, but I’m loving how they look! I used scraps for the back and for the first time I sewed pieces of scrap batting together to make pieces big enough. It was not as hard as I thought it was going to be, and I used up a bunch of littler pieces. For smaller projects this will be a great way to use up all those little pieces. I just can’t see doing it for a larger quilt, I’d rather buy the right size instead of piecing it together.

I also spent a little money this week! I decided that instead of printing and cutting more hexagon pieces myself (which would involve getting more paper the right thickness), I’d buy some from paperpieces.com. I ordered Sunday, they shipped Monday and I got them on Wednesday! Can’t beat that! I ordered the biggest pack of hexagons, and I also bought some diamonds and triangles that will match up with the 1″ hexagons, just because I have ideas in my head I’d love to try out sometime. If I was ordering I might as well get all the pieces I wanted at the same time. I need to punch holes in the center of the hexagons so I pin them like all the ones I’ve made myself. I’m trying to decide if I want to make all the hexagon diamonds first or put them into the quilt as I make them. Having this many hexagon papers will help, but I still don’t think it’s going to be enough. One of these days I need to count how many pieces are going to be in this quilt. If my calculations are correct there are 1605 hexagons in the diamonds (half and full). I have no clue how many hexagons are in the pathways, that will take a lot longer to count up! Maybe this will be enough hexagons. I also need to take all the papers out of my first hexagon quilt so I can use those too, that will be the next one that I hand quilt, if I can ever get back to my second practice piece.

I’m thinking about joining a hexagon swap, I can’t commit to the current one because I need to get other items done first. I’m just concerned about the way they baste, I’d like to baste my way!

Oh well, things to do around the house, hopefully I’ll be back with some updates soon.

Hexi diamonds update!

I have all the half hexi diamonds completed! So excited that these are done! Now I can start the full diamonds, I only have 47 left to do! 🙂 Just spent a little bit of time looking on paperpieces.com and ordered some 1″ hexagons papers, 1″ diamonds and 1″ equilateral triangles. I figured if I was ordering I might as well get it all now. I figure I need the hexagons now and I just don’t feel like cutting those out anymore, I’ve done enough of that. Besides, I don’t have anymore of the paper I was using anyway.

Gotta run, I have a table runner to see if I can quilt before Alex gets up from his nap, then I can work on binding tonight during the Super Bowl!

Wiggly Whimsy Row 1

Well, I have the first row of the Wiggly Whimsy quilt completed, only took me a couple of hours to do. (Kept having to take care of other things or it wouldn’t have taken me so long!). It was so simple since everything was already cut out! I can’t wait to see the whole thing put together, I’m really liking the way the black makes all the colors pop, although I knew it would since I have other quilts I’m working with a black background! I don’t know if I’ll be able to wait until next month to work on the next row, we’ll see what happens since I have a bunch of other quilts I should be working on.

I’m continuing to work on hexagon diamonds and I’ve started hand quilting the next practice piece. I will be concentrating on hexagon diamonds though because I need that one finished before we go camping! I have a few others that I can work on at the machine while Alex is napping, in fact I’m going to see if I can put one of them together now, it’s been cut out for at least a month.

Hexagon Update

I’ve been hard at work on my hexagon diamonds quilt. I now have all the diamonds that are put together sewn into 1 piece. It is getting to the point where I have to stand on a chair and hold the camera over my head (almost!) to get a picture of the whole thing. I don’t know what I’ll do when it gets more rows added on! I’m busy working on all the half diamonds so they are ready when it’s time to add them in, and with making more black hexis. Won’t be able to add diamonds until there are black pathways. I’m hoping to have enough black made that as I put a diamond in I can add the black pathway as well. I’ve set myself a deadline of March 31st, don’t know if it will be ready for quilting by then or not. Right now this is the only project I am working on by hand. I hope to work on more machine work during the day when Alex is napping, the next one I hope to finish is the hubby’s ~~birthday~~ Christmas present. I’ll explain once I finish it!

We spend a lot of time sitting on the floor playing with Alex and I keep forgetting to get a pillow form when I’m at Joann’s, when they are on sale and I’m there I can’t remember what the size is I need, and when I’m at home and can get the size I never remember! A couple of years ago I used triangle scraps (I think I cut them with the Go Value Die) and made this pillow cover. Since I had pulled out a high loft batting for the ironing table and never used it and I know I probably won’t use it in a quilt since I don’t like mine that thick, I decided to fold it as needed and use that as my pillow form. It’s not perfect, but better than spending a ton of money on a pillow form! Alex loves to lay on it and watch tv, although we’ve decided to start limiting how much tv he gets to watch. He’s turning into a couch potato!

Design Wall Monday

I’ve been working hard on my hexi diamond quilt. Since I decided to use it in the RV I have a deadline – self-imposed since we don’t have a delivery date or a camping date! I have a few more diamonds completed, they just haven’t been added on yet because the colors are too similar to these and I want to spread them out. I’m hoping to get another row added on in the next week, I managed to get an entire diamond put together while at my MIL’s for dinner last night. Head over to PatchworkTimes to see other Design walls!

Hexagon Diamonds

I’ve mentioned a few days this week that I was going to concentrate on my hexi diamonds. I’ve decided that with some extra borders this quilt should be large enough to fit on the bed in our RV. So I have 6-8 weeks to get it done, because that’s when we get the RV! I already know that I will do simple quilting, a line through the center of each “row”, might not make sense now, but it will later! I started attaching the diamonds to each other last night, I think I’ll put them all together before I start working on making more diamonds. I have all the diamonds and half diamonds kitted up, can’t wait to see what some of them look like finished! Today is HeLP for Hexie-aholics day over at sarah did it!, go take a look at what everyone is posting!

Cavs Cross Stitch Update

Well I did it, I finished the first page! As I think I said before I’m putting this aside for a little while to work on my hexagon diamonds. I’ve been kitting more diamonds and I really like some of the combinations I have setup. So back to the cross stitch, I only have 14 pages left to do, lets hope they go as fast as this one did! The back looks terrible with all the confetti, but that’s ok since no one will see it once it’s framed!

Late Night Update

I’m waiting for the end of the Cavs game, I just have to finish watching it before bed! I just spent the evening working on cutting 2.5″ squares for the Wiggly Whimsy quilt and using those same fabrics for kitting up more diamonds for my hexi diamonds quilt. I only need 9 more kits of diamonds and everything will be ready for the whole quilt. Well, not the whole quilt because I will still need to get more black for the pathways between the diamonds. I’ve decided that I’m going to put the Cavs cross stitch away for awhile (once I finish the page) and concentrate on the hexi diamonds quilt for awhile. I’m also figuring on this being a good choice for taking camping, since everything is already kitted up it’ll be nice to work on at night or even during the day if we aren’t doing anything else.

The directions for the Wiggly Whimsy quilt say to cut a charm square into quarters so you’ll have 4 of the same squares in the quilt. I’ve taken that to an extreme and I’m only using 1 piece in the quilt. I will not have any matching 2.5″ squares in the quilt. I’ve got 130 sitting here, I just need to find 18 more unique squares. I think I’ll be able to pull from my 4.5″ cut squares to find what I need and I won’t need to cut into my yardage. I absolutely love that I was able to cut so many fabrics tonight using my Accuquilt Go – I never would have been able to get all this done just using the rotary cutter. I have TONS of black to cut for this quilt, not sure if I’ll work on that tomorrow or not. But I will definitely be finishing off the colored squares.

Hubby did help me get the cubes put together, his part was easy putting the casters on. We checked in the garage and garage attic and don’t have any pieces of wood large enough to use for the top, I’ll need to go to Home Depot this week and have a piece cut.

No pictures tonight, I’ll take some of my 148 colored 2.5″ squares tomorrow when they are all cut.