Bloggers Quilt Festival

If you haven't looked at any quilters blogs this week you might not know that there is s Bloggers Quilt Festival in progress, but you would be in a tiny minority!!!

Amy does a great job twice a year giving all quilters a place where they can show off their favourite creations.  You can visit by using this link 

I'm a bit late getting my post up this year, but I really wanted to enter this hand pieced and hand quilted quilt made for my best friend's first grandchild (I'm hugely jealous that she's got one and I haven't, but love that she, and her daughter, are happy to share him - to the extent that I am his Granny Benta!)

His quilt took ages - years in fact, but I'm really chuffed with it!

My original "it's finally finished" post is here

Secret Finish part 3 (finishing)

How to finish a hexi quilt top?  Jackie and  I asked Google, and loved this finish from Badskirt, so I thought I'd give it a go.  I now think another time I would be happier doing this where the hexagons were a bit bigger than these little whatsits.

But the instructions were great, and the finish went well

* Add a border of hexies around the edge, right sides together

* Cut the backing and wadding to the same as the outline, and flip the extra border over to the back leaving a zigzag effect on the front . . .

 . . . and also on the back

Then slip stitch onto the back - and *then* its finished!

Secret Finish Part 2 (quilting)

I'm really not a quilter.  I don't much enjoy machine quilting, and I'm quite sure life is too short for hand quilting, but for some reason I got it into my head that having hand pieced this quilt I should hand quilt it too

So I spent the next month doing just that

Jackie is very kindly including me as an honorary Grandmother (she gleefully told me six months ago "We are going to be grandmothers"!!!!) so I felt the baby needed to be in touch with its Norwegian heritage - so I've used my favourite Michael Miller Vikings fabric for the backing

I had pretty much finished the quiting when I went to visit Jackie in February.  My plan was to sacrifice the edges of the outer hexies, and finish with a straight yellow boarder - bish bash bosh - it would done in plenty of time . . .

However - Jackie and I played around with some ideas for finishing *her* hexi quilt, which made me rethink the finishing of the yellow quilt

so tomorrow I'll show you how I finished the edges of the yellow hexies

Secret Finish Part 1 (piecing)

Back in January I showed you a recent photo of the Yellow Hexie Quilt that implied it was still a way off being a completed top, and therefor a long way off being finished.

Since then I haven't shown you any more photos and haven't even dropped any more clues.  The quilt was being finished for a baby; both under construction at the same time, but baby's grandma is my best friend Jackie.  Like the very best kind of best friend she is a loyal reader of this blog, but I wanted the quilt to be a surprise.  Jackie has now seen the quilt, and has taken it for baby Aidan, so I can share the rest of it's story here:

So the work had been plodding on, and the photos had been taken, but until now, unshared!  The earliest post about this top is March 2013, but it was actually started a year or so before that

18th January

20th January

All pieced :-)

Tomorrow I'll show you what I decided to do about quilting

Instagram Issue

Lisa persuaded me to try Instagram - I couldn't really see the point, but I gave it a try (the things we do for children eh?)  I also signed up for Twitter before Christmas, for a particular event which in the end happened elsewhere in cyberspace.

I dip into Twitter occasionally, but it doesn't do anything for me, but Instagram is a whole different thing - I love it!  If I've got hold of the right end of the stick, it's a bit like blogging but one photo per post and far fewer words, followers can comment or [like] or can move on. 

I think that I would maybe have chosen IG (get me, jargon already) instead of blogger if there had been a choice at the time

So, IGers - please let me know your IG name so I can find you (Hadley, Katy, Nicky, I've found you :-)

And because a blog post should always have a photo, here is a recent photo of the yellow hexie quilt

Bucket Blog

The reason for the bucket was not anything to do with the local flooding

But was to do with the assorted parts of this hexi top I'm sewing downstairs in front of the TV

There is the top itself, the spare flowers for the bottom row, the papers, the tacked hexies, the tacking thread, the stitching thread, the thimble, my glasses, the scissors, the fabric ready to be tacked ...

You get the picture - loads of stuff, which lived in lots of bags.

Well now it all lives in a bucket!

A covered bucket, with pockets inside

and out

It works really well ...

Except when the cat tried to make friends with the bucket (hopefully this video will work)

(Yes Avril, maybe I should have a lid!)

Not Quite a Plan

Having cut strips for my STAW (Scrappy Trip Around the World) I was up enthusiastically this morning - sewing, pressing, cutting, and ...

Well, the idea of the STAW is that you can see the stripes, Bonnie Hunter explains it really well here,  and this is why it uses six different fabrics per block, and is a good general stash buster.

*HOWEVER* my plan was to use Christmassy fabrics - they are (in my stash at least) generally red or white/cream, so I had the really good idea (?) of alternating them

Yes, if you look hard, you can see the stripes, but what you actually see first is the red / white checker board effect

So I'm adapting the plan, and making my blocks slightly smaller (5x5 instead of 6x6) and adding sashing

 

 Four down, 16 to go!

Slightly higher in the counting stakes is the yellow hexi top: about 650 down, and who knows how many to go!

 Still it has grown over the holidays :-)

Hacksaws and Hexies

Hacksaws and Hexies - not a common combination!  

Husband offered to spend yesterday helping friends cut up this tree that fell in last week's storm

They did a great job 

But now they have to get rid of all this

Meanwhile my God Daughter and I spent the day sewing!  She has finished this Knot a Quilt

So I got her to help me with hexies

And then she started her own Hexie project 

While I worked on that old portable standby ...

The yellow Hexie quilt is growing, unlike the tree!

How Many Hexies?

Over the last few evenings I've tacked and whip stitched about 200 three quarter inch hexies.  I have sewn them together in strips, and when I've sewn the strips together it will look like this

This isn't even half the full project as once the centre is filled in I'm adding borders in solid colours that match the dotty fabrics - a few more years' TV project me thinks.

At least it's growing - rather than the darn Northern Lights project which got unsewn yesterday and has been staring accusingly at me all day today, I need to do a lot of rethinking to get the effect I want

Picture Postcard and Plagiarised Poetry

I'm still catching up with the overdue Star Of Africa blocks: Leanne asked for a block representing a postcard: I already had in mind what I wanted to make for her, but needed to find the postcard that matched it (not necessarily the conventional way, but it worked)

So I was delighted when I found this postcard

with swans, the castle, and bearskin guards, it ties in perfectly with this embroidered block

Hope Leanne likes it

Best Friend, oh Bestie,

How do you love me?

Let me count the ways *

(I apologise to poetry lovers everywhere for that awful mutilation of a lovely romantic poem)

Actually, I'm not sure I can count how much Jackie loves me - she loves me enough to sizzix all these hexies for me.  She has sorted and cut and trimmed and then posted them to me so I can get on with the Yellow Hexi quilt

Love you Jackie x x x

				* "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Successful Shopping

Day one at Festival of Quilts: brain dead, feet knackered, not much impulse shopping, but I managed to get more  yellow for yellow hexi quilt, and solids to match the dotty fabrics, so I can add borders to make it bigger

And I got some Oakshott to border the triangles quilt, and fabric for two bag projects

And Jackie got me this lovely sewing themed mug!

:-) thank you Jackie 

Holiday Hexies

Both in Ireland, and in the New Forest I did some more work on the yellow Hexie quilt, I'm a bit worried there may not be enough yellow! 

The centre is being stitched in strips, I've worked out a suitable distribution of colours and positions and am referring to " the list " for each strip 

Then I had a brainwave, and I've written the position on the back of each coloured hexi so I know how  many to add to each side

Plodding and Pottering

I haven't managed any significant makes in the last couple of week as when I haven't been trying to recreate my kitchen, I've been spending most evenings embroidering school uniforms for a customer - but between hooping, un-hooping, snipping, etc, I have managed a bit of sewing, so I thought it's time to show:

Endless Ribbon has now become twin quilt tops for the Siblings Together charity: similar to one another, but different, they both have lots of I-Spy quilts in them

The hexies that I have been working on downstairs have reached almost the end of the light fabric: there are three "Grandmother's flowers" here, and two large random hexies, and there will be one or two more in the mainly dark fabrics.  These will probably become back and front of a hexi bag, and others appliqued onto some Kona Coal for a table runner

Having got close to the end of the hexi fabric, and needing a project to take on the train on Monday, I cut some small pictures from fabrics at Broom Farm, and tacked these I-Spy hexies.  No particular plans for these, but it will take a while to get enough to make anything anyway

a few posts ago I posted a pic of a height chart of the baby at Chertsey Museum

but didn't post a pic of the finished quilt that was made from the other blocks made by the ladies there

And I embroidered her name too

Not too bad going for two weeks eh?

A humble apology

This is a humble apology to the patchwork and quilting world: there is a new patchworker amongst us, which means that our share of the available fabric, threads, wadding, notions and gadgets will be a tiny bit smaller.  And it's all my fault.

13 months ago I started Crafty Church at my church: just two hours on a Saturday afternoon once a month, and when Janet started attending she seemed a normal person.  She brought along a patchwork bag that she wanted to copy - and did, and then did again, and again.

(I am sorry sisters, I should have seen the signs)

I make the mistake of taking her to Sandown last summer, and that when I started to worry about what I had unleashed - we had to leave early as I was worried about just how many quilts she was buying supplies for.    You know normally people start with squares: something simple, no, she started a triangles quilt one session, and brought it finished as a "Show and Tell" the following month.  First quilt, ever.

She then started quilt two,

 (!)


Then she didn't sew for a while, as she spent three months in New Zealand (visiting fabric shops?)

She came home with a photo of a quilt like this,

and a suitcase full of fabrics, and two template pieces (which I couldn't make head of tail of);  luckily Jackie was there to unravel the mystery, and less thatn three weeks later Janet has pieced the top, basted and in-the-ditch quilted, and is ready to bind it.

I need something that's going to slow her down!!!

Meanwhile my creating has been restricted by the old problem of not-enough-hours in the day.  I have managed to join three donated blocks and make them into a growth chart for Jessica - the daughter of Sally at Chertsey Museum - to go with the baby quilt that all the ladies contributed to.  The presentation will hopefully be on Friday

And Blogger seems unprepared to check my spellings for me, so apologies for any errors!