Category: Hexagons

Busy Summer!

Ugh! I swear I had major intentions of doing a lot more posting this year. And I have been finishing projects this summer. However we had a LOT of stuff happening this summer. My sister got married in July and it was a wonderful day! We had a bit of traveling to North Carolina, a bunch of camping trips and then it was time to get ready for school to start again!

So I did manage to finish my plaid-ish quilt the end of June, with a small problem – self inflicted! I was having problems with thread breaking and changed the needle. Unfortunately I put the darn thing in backwards and the thread just kept breaking. Didn’t know I had it in wrong until I called Handiquilter Customer Support and they told me. Once I fixed the needle it worked perfectly again and I could finish the quilt before our July 4th camping trip. The kids used it to sit on for fireworks when camping.

We have various charities we donate quilts to through our quilt guild. I volunteered to quilt 5 quilts for Honor Quilts. We give quilts to veterans in the county where I live. That was fun and good practice my quilting when I didn’t have anything ready to quilt. They didn’t have anything else needing quilted at our last meeting so I can work on some of my own quilts. I have 2 that just need batting cut and they need pressed before they can go on the frame. Hope to get to work on that this week. One of the quilts is from the workshop held on September 12th at our last meeting. We had the Redneck Quilter teaching us how to make a Deb Tucker quilt Star Shadows. It was a great workshop and I already have the top completed and waiting to be quilted. Can’t wait to see that one finished and not joining my UFO list for next year!

I was able to finish the Fall Simply Sign from Fat Quarter Shop, Cassie couldn’t wait to put it up on the door and get the Summer one down. Only 2 more to get done for this series and I don’t know if I’ll get to them this year or not. We’ll see, I might skip Halloween and do Christmas first.

So I know I’ve mentioned in the past my participation in Elise Baek’s groups and SAL’s (sew alongs). Earlier in the year I did a hexagon flower swap and 16 people signed up with only 10 sending in hexagons. It was asked that we do another one and I currently have 74 people signed up! This means since I’m making 1 hexagon flower for each person I have to make that many flowers. I think I have all the petal pieces picked up and grouped and I’m working on basting them. I need to figure out what I’m using for the centers so I can start putting the flowers together. The deadline for mailing is October 31st, so I have time but I don’t want to wait until the last minute!

I’m also working on basting pieces for the Daisy Bloom EPP SAL that is currently happening with Elise. I have 2 basted and the other 14 are in baggies all with the fabric ready to be basted. I’ll work on these when I have time. My plan is to make all of Elise’s flower EPP blocks and applique them all together on background blocks. That will be another long term project and I don’t even have all the templates for the other flowers yet.

I’ll be back soon, I’ll have 2 quilts to show!

Kelly

Scrappy Finish

While I was waiting for some wide backing to arrive for my plaid-ish quilt, I pulled out my scrappy 9-patch quilt top from 2013 and figured I could get it done quickly. Yep I was able to easily do that! the kids never let new quilts sit for long before they are being claimed. I don’t know what they do with all these quilts but they love when I finish them! Most of this quilt is made from the 2.5″ square bin, I swear that bin just doesn’t go away no matter how many quilts I make from it!

The next quilt to be worked on is plaid-ish, wide backing is supposed to be here today, I can’t tell from the tracking if it will be or not. Since it’s such a large quilt I told the kids it’s going to the trailer and they can use it for picnics, fireworks, etc. Hoping to have it finished by the weekend, we’ll see how quick I get it quilted.

I need to get a little more finished on the hexagon quilt I’m working on so I can get pictures and get everything detailed here. Haven’t worked on it the last couple of days since I was working on binding. So be back soon!

Cassie’s Quilt Done!

Cassie’s quilt, started in 2019 is finally finished and on her bed! She’s loving it and keeps saying how cozy and warm it is. The backing is totally pieced together from 3 blocks I picked up from the free table at guild, 2 yards of Effie’s Woods by Deb Strain, a couple of mini charm packs of Effie’s Woods and a regular charm pack of Effie’s Woods. Of course that wasn’t close to enough, so I grabbed a couple of Harry Potter fat quarters to fill in where needed. She loves it so much and I’m really glad to have it off the UFO list!

I was looking at my lists to see what I had to work on. I came across my EPP Party quilt. There’s 13 blocks and I only completed 6 back in 2017 when it was released online. This was a SAL done by Mister Domestic and Pat Bravo in 2017, and the paper pieces were and are still available at paperpieces.com. I realized that with all the EPP projects I have in progress and new ones I’d really like to do, I just wasn’t going to get back to doing this one. So I put the 6 blocks together and used some of the 2.5″ batik strips to make a bigger border. It’s completed quilted and bound and ready to be donated to Community Service at the next guild meeting.

With these 2 now completed and off the list, 10 items are now crossed off my to-do list. 50% quilts and 50% cross stitch! I spent the last few days working on a cross stitch for my sister’s wedding. I asked if I could make the ring pillow for her and while it’s not in pillow form yet, she does love it so far! I’ll get the pillow completed in the next week or so, I’m not worried yet 🙂 It’s hard to tell but I did use Kimberly’s Light Pink 14-count aida from Fat Quarter Shop, my sister is a pink girl! Now I need to find the right pink for a little border around the stitching so I have somewhere to stitch a ribbon down for the rings, plus the back of it.

I’ll be back soon, I pulled out an old EPP hexagon project after I finished the cross stitch yesterday. I swear I blogged about it before, but I couldn’t find it last night. So I need to document the project!

Goodbye 2021!

Wow, what a year we’ve had! Lots of camping and family time, some health issues with Raven back in the spring – she’s back to acting like her old self – and not much finishing of projects! I’m determined that 2022 will be the year of finishing projects and I’ve been getting things to the point where I can finish them.

I’ve been working on Cassie’s bed quilt, since it’s EPP I can work on it at night. 3 rows are put together and I have the 4th ready to add on, possibly tonight since we are staying up to see the ball drop.

I’ve been working on cross stitch this year, trading off with EPP and my puzzles. I did a couple of Star Wars planets (patterns from Etsy), did 2 of the teacher pieces in the spring, and lately I’ve been working on the Deathly Hallows that I found on Etsy. Monday I’m starting on a SAL with PixelPatterns and we are doing the periodic table over I think it’s 7 months. I have everything ready to start, except the pattern!

I’m still working on too many EPP projects, but some of them are REALLY long term projects. I have the EPP pentagon quilt top almost done, unfortunately I need to order fabric for the border before I can finish it, the piece I want to use is too small, and it’s pretty small so I should be able to quilt it on my domestic. Haven’t done much on the Dear Jane EPP quilt, but a little bit got done on the Hexie Insanity quilt. I’m hoping that once I get the hand work done on Cassie’s quilt that I’ll be able to get another old EPP quilt put together.

I’m still working on saving the money to get the longarm machine that I want, it would help me finish quilts so much faster! I might see about renting time on a machine and see how much it will cost. I just don’t know if I’d be better off saving the money toward my own instead of renting time. We’ll see.

The Harry Potter quilt blocks have now all been cut out, and like I mentioned yesterday I have only 2 left to stitch. Once I get those done I can start putting the rows together, but I can’t get too much of it done since I need more of the background fabric that I’m using for sashing. I only have a little bit of it left. I can’t wait to get this one done since it’s for our bed. The quilt I have on it now is a queen and doesn’t fit very well on the king bed!

Happy New Year, be safe if you are going out and hopefully I’ll be back soon because something is finished! 🙂

Goodbye 2020!

Ugh, I was so hoping to get more quilting done this year! We had all this time at home and I could have done so much. However, I did have an absolutely wonderful year for my business and had lots of time spent with the hubby and kids.

I have started hand quilting my first hexagon quilt, it’s slow going because I have so many hand projects that I rotate through. I’ve only been working in the white areas, because I haven’t decided what thread I want to use in the hexie flowers yet. I figure there’s a lot of white and I can decide the other color(s) later. You should be able to see the detail if you click on the pictures. My stitches aren’t 100% uniform, but I’m getting the hang of it and as it’s not going in a show/contest I don’t care. It’s mine and it’s been 100% stitched by hand. I don’t think I’m going to put a regular binding on it either, I’m thinking of doing a knife edge to it – I think I’ll need to do the edges before I quilt that last border though.

In October I started working on the pentagon project. It’s changed a few times since I decided what I wanted to do with it, so now I have 4 pentagons with a square in the middle appliqued to a background. I’ve gotten enough done that I put together the first row, used a ton of 1.5″ squares from the bin, and there’s a lot more that will be used by the time I’m done with this top. I’m working on putting the sashing together while I put together bow-tie blocks and the 9-patches I need for the border on that quilt. It’s all pretty mindless sewing when I need it.

As if I didn’t have enough hand projects, I pulled out some cross stitch and started working on that again. This is a piece for Alex and I have one I want to make for Cassie as well as one I want to make for 2 special teachers the kids have had. I have a bunch of Star Wars ones to make for Alex and at some point they’ll get done. In the past I’ve done all my cross stitch with paper patterns, but lately I’ve wanted to do it with an ipad. The app that I really want to use isn’t available for ios yet, and the android tablets we have are WAY to old for it to work. So I found a pdf app that will allow me to annotate the file and we’ll see how that works. I just got it updated last night but didn’t have time to try and see how well it works, might try that tonight.

Kids are off until next Monday (1/4), and I’m hoping to get some time to work on quilting. I got everything ready yesterday, because I intended on starting the quilting until I realized I may have inadvertently tossed my quilting gloves! I ordered a new pair yesterday, but who knows how long it will take for them to get to me. I’ll have to start quilting without them I guess and hope I have enough black thread to last until the new spool gets here with the gloves. I know I won’t be able to finish it before the end of the year, but I’d still like to start working on it and maybe start the new year with a finish.

Here’s hoping that 2021 is a better year for everyone and that I finish some projects in the new year!

A Post with Another Finish

Back in July when we were allowed to start having guild meetings again, one of our members – who owns a quilt shop – did a presentation and showed a new MSQC Quilt As You Go (QAYG) hexagon template. Of course I had to buy one! When I got home that night I grabbed a charm pack I had sitting here and some scraps of muslin to see how quickly I could put one together. While you can machine stitch them once you’ve folded the sides over, I decided to hand stitch them all. Because you know I needed another hand project 🙂 I used 3 charm packs I bought from Connecting Threads years ago, Mirage Garden and Mirage Home, for the centers and black and muslin for the backings. I used just enough of the muslin to account for the 6 really dark charm squares that just wouldn’t show up with a black binding/border, of course that was just enough to make a big hexagon for the center. 🙂 I think once I get my dresser in the bedroom cleared off – it’s a mess! – I’ll use this as a cover for it. But I might find somewhere else to use it in the meantime.

I’ve been busy the last few days working on orders – a few HUGE orders came in so it’s been all day with the embroidery machine running. Hope to start quilting the next quilt soon.

Finish #1 for 2020

Yeah I know I already posted a finish in February, but I actually finished this one the end of January/beginning of February and took it for Show and Tell at Guild in February. Back in 2013, I posted that someone from guild came over and taught me how to hand quilt. Well I started working on a practice piece and it got put away in a basket and forgotten about, you know how these things happen! So I was looking for something else and found the practice quilt with all the 1/4″ tape all falling off of it. So I took it out of the hoop (to be returned to Sue finally!), pulled all the 1/4″ tape off and just started working on it. Took a few nights and a few poked fingers, but I got it done and found some already made rainbow/scrap binding that I could use on it. It’s not perfect, nothing I ever make is, but it’s done and I hand quilted it all by myself! Now the first hexagon quilt I made is basted and once I get a hexie project finished I will start hand quilting it. Besides I need to figure out how I want to quilt it still!

Hexie Temperature Quilt Update

Wow! I spent the afternoon, minus time for a family walk outside on the bike path, working on pulling fabrics for the hexie temperature quilt. Unfortunately for me, I had to do some cutting into fat quarters for a lot of it because I just didn’t have the colors in my 2.5″ square bin. But that’s ok with me, at least I now have ALL the squares for the hexies I need and I can work on basting and doing the flowers whenever I want. I will most likely start working on them tonight, there are 4 weeks already basted and they just need put together into a flower. Then I’ll have a stack ready for applique and borders.

I’m starting to feel good about progress made so far this year on quilts. I have 2 basted and ready for quilting, 2 have been finished and knocked off the UFO Challenge list and I’m making progress on multiple in progress quilts. Hubby just left to pick up our dinner and I’m going to work on ironing the scrap basket fabrics so they can be cut down and put in the correct tubs when I have time. I need to get this office cleaned up and that’s just phase 1!

Lots of Updates!

Amazingly I haven’t had a lot of things that required me to leave the house the last few days. So I decided that it was time to spend some time sewing! Well I did take a nice long walk the other day it was so nice!

So first item up on my list was to get the border put on the Pokemon quilt. This top has been done for almost 2 years and I don’t know what I was waiting for! Not the best picture, kids had things out and I couldn’t get a better one. But the border is now on this and it’s in the to be quilted pile!

Since the top is now done I decided all the solids leftover from this could go into the Harry Potter quilt, since I need more to make it bigger than the original SAL. I think the SAL was for a twin bed size/throw and I’m making it large enough to fit our king size bed and hang over the sides properly – which I can never do for some reason. 🙂 So everything shown in the basket at the top is from the Pokemon quilt. In fact I used some of it already to make my next Harry Potter block! 9 3/4 is finished and I have 12 more blocks to go!

So with that done I decided to pull out my 2017 Hexie temperature quilt (picture from post in 2018) and see where I was with that. Boy did I leave that project in a mess! Back in 2018 I put the first 2 rows together and then put together the blocks and appliqued all the hexie flowers that were completed. It looks like I have 4 flowers that still need to be put together and I can possibly put the next 2 rows together. However, it looks like I never updated my spreadsheet/trello with what was completed AND it looks like I never got the high temp for the day from August 28th to the end of the year! So it looks like I’ll spend a little time today gathering the rest of my data and maybe even pulling fabrics for more hexies. Since we are going on a mini vacation for Spring Break I’ll need a project (or 2) to take with me!

Cassie wants to do some sewing today, we’ll see if she really makes anything!

February Finishes

I did manage to finish the 2 tasks I wanted to finish this month, I got the doll quilt completely finished AND I completed a block for my Harry Potter quilt. Cassie is thrilled with her new doll quilt, she immediately took it and put it on one of her doll beds. I just did simple loopy quilting in the triangles, I still need to work on my speed with curves, there’s some eyelashing on the back, but Cassie’s doll won’t care!

I picked an easy block from my Harry Potter quilt to do, the Deathly Hallows. With this block done I now only have 13 left to do! I might see if I can get another one done today, we’ll see since we have some rearranging to do in Cassie’s room today.

I was hoping to get my first hexagon quilt basted earlier in the month, and I wasn’t able to do that then, however I was able to start working on it today! i should be able to get it finished tonight while I watch some basketball. This will be hand quilted this year!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts.