WIP La Passacaglia

Slowly but surely my La Passacaglia quilt is coming along. 

  Very slowly.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

My New English Paper Piecing Project

Last December I cut up all of my small scraps and started making this hexagon quilt.  I had seen pictures of the La Passacaglia quilt and decided to make my own much simplified version with overlapping hexagons - partly because I didn't want to invest in the papers and templates.  Then last month I saw the papers and templates on sale on Massdrop and I totally caved.  A sale and almost a year of seeing the most gorgeous La Passacaglia blocks totally broke my resolve not to start another EPP project.

I have put away my hexagon quilt for now and am focusing on my La Passacaglia.  It is awesome!  I worked on it today and got even further than this.  It is going to take forever, but it is lots of fun choosing fabrics.  Fussy cutting the flowers did waste quite a bit of fabric, but I hope to use those little bits in a different block.  You are sure to see many more pictures of this project.  :)

In the You Can Quilt! Blog Hop there have been posts on the Half Square Triangle, Quarter Square Triangle and Flying Geese Chapters.  The posts are a great way to get a feel for the book and you can enter to win a copy of You Can Quilt! and a bundle of fabric at each of the posts.  Check them out!

Linking to Scraptastic Tuesday.

Aleah English Paper Pieces!

Last Sunday my daughter Aleah (age 10) worked on her English paper piecing.  She is really good!  She glued the fabric around the 2" hexagons a few weeks ago and when she got started whip stitching them together this weekend she had this done in about an hour and a half.

I'm not usually a feet in picture type of person, but it gives you a sense of scale.

Her inspiration fabric was the blue veggie/dish fabric and we picked other fabric that coordinated with it from my scrap drawer.  I might try to convince her to make another one this size and we can make them into a potholder/trivet.  But she might decided to keep going.  I'll let you know what happens.  

This Might Become a Thing

I made another ball this weekend.  

Pink, orange and yellow with a pop of green.  

It is nice to finish an English paper piecing project in a day or two instead of a year or two.

English Paper Pieced Ball

This just might be my favorite thing I have ever made.  Love.  Love.  Love it.  I love the fabrics, the rainbow of color and each and every little hexagon and pentagon.  I first saw a ball like this at Lily Quilts about 5 years ago, but had never made one until now.

The modern quilt group in Des Moines is having a pincushion swap at our April meeting and I was starting to stress out about what I was going to bring.  I had pinned tons of ideas but was really nervous about working with all of the curved little pieces most of them use.  So I stayed in my comfort zone and made an English paper pieced ball that can be used as a pincushion.  No inspiring overcoming-your-fears post today.  But why overcome fears when you can make something this cute?  :)

I used this tutorial by Kristy Daum that includes the hexagon and pentagon templates.  (For more step-by-step instructions on how to English paper piece visit my Hexagon Flower tutorial.)  Construction was fairly straight forward and is put together like a soccer ball.

The hardest thing about making the ball was picking the right fabrics so that the ball blended from color to color.  (I know, life is full of hard things.)  I started a little heavy on the reds and oranges and so I ended up light on the cool colors.  But that is a minor thing.  When I make this again I will also pay more attention to matching thread color with fabric color.  I switched out thread regularly, but used gray a lot and it didn't blend as well as I was hoping.

Here is a shot of me holding the ball for perspective.  It fits nicely into the hand.  I've been trying to cut down on the number of toys we have, so I am not sure if I will make any for my kids, but I have already told them that I will make a set for each of their kids.  You know, when they are the ones that have to police picking up toys.  Cause that's what grandma's do, right?

Linking to Finish It Up Friday.

Scrap Hexies: Coming Along

 I have made some progress since January on my English paper pieced hexagons.  It is starting to look like something!  When I cut up all my small scraps for the hexagons I was worried about how they would play together, but so far, so good.

 Becca enjoys climbing all over it (when her horse isn't) and looking at the different fabrics.   She has assigned a flower to every family member.  Her's is the pink and gray one with the seahorses and I think my husband's is the orange/red one.  I forget mine.  I'm sure she will inform me again.  :)

Linking up with Scraptastic Tuesday.

Do You Ever Wonder...

...if you should have a home decor/diy type of blog?  I wonder if I would get more done around the house if I was motivated to finish painting/peeling wallpaper/organizing closets/washing dishes so I could post cool before and after pictures about it.  ;)  Instead I sit and work on English paper piecing in the evenings.  I am working on a bunch of Christmas pillows right now - way more relaxing than peeling wallpaper.  I never wonder if I should have a "kid" blog.  Blogs are breaks from kids.

...how people seem to do "everything?"  I know they don't, but I always seem to be biting off more than I can chew and then wondering why I am making myself stressed.

Case in point, my "does-anyone-want to-sew-along-and-make-a-tree-skirt-post".   I don't know what I was smoking when I wrote that.   A "real" quilt along would be way more than I could handle at this time, but at the same time I would LOVE to sew along with other people.  So here is a happy medium idea: if you would like to follow the original instructions for the Diamond Quilt and post pictures in my new-fancy-dancy Sewn By... flickr group then we could all cheer each other on and I could answer any questions you might have about the quilt.  And it could all be done without having a nervous breakdown.  :)

Linking up!  Hop on over to see some great EPP projects!

Part One - Done!

This month I finished up the main section of the Star Flower quilt!  I love how it looks so far!  I was on a roll and ready to add the borders, but when I went to buy some more of the black fabric at Joann's I discovered that it was out of stock!  Augh!  I bought it in the calico section - you know, the section where they stock the same fabrics for years and years? - so I assumed there would be more when I needed it.  The not-so-helpful salesperson said that they might get it back in stock but that it can sometimes take a month or more.  I checked out the other two Joann's in the area and they didn't have any either.

Who knows, maybe as I audition different fabrics for the border I will find something I like better anyways.  This might be the push I need to try something out of my comfort zone.  Or maybe my black fabric back in stock next month.  I'll let you know!  :)

Flower Garden Finish

Last night I finished sewing on the last of the white spacers along the edge of my hexagon quilt!  I love it!  It was a long journey to get here and I am so proud that I really did manage to finish it.

I took a picture of the first five flowers I stitched together back in February 2010.  I was sooo  proud of them.  I felt like I had made so many!  How naive I was. There are 132 flower blocks in the finished quilt so I had a bit more to go.  :)

In the fall of 2010, I had finished about a quarter of the quilt.  That cute little girl started kindergarten this year!

I kept chugging along.  Sometimes months would go by without any work on it and sometimes I would make flowers obsessively.  My favorite time (only time, really) to do handwork is after the kids go to bed.  I love to just sit down and watch some Hulu or Netflix and do English paper piecing.  If I worked fast I could get one flower done an evening.  Let's not even start to think about how much TV watching this quilt represents, ok?  ;)

Early on I found an online offer for twenty-five 1930's reproduction fat quarters for $25!  Sweet!  In retrospect I should have gotten two packets - there is a lot of fabric in this quilt!  The spacers are Kona Unbleached PFD.  It is more cream than Kona white and more white than Kona Snow - the perfect white in my opinion.  The flower centers are Kona Corn and the hexagons are 1 inch a side.

I love the texture on the back!

I got the idea for using three white spacers between the blocks instead of surrounding the blocks in white from the Paper Pieces picture page.  I was afraid if I surrounded each flower in white that I would get bored and give up.  I like how the spacers still give the flowers breathing room, but how I didn't have to stitch as many white hexagons.  Plus it makes it a bit different from other Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts.

I give my husband a bad time about always having to build stuff so sturdily, but I am just as crazy about my sewing.  After making a couple flowers I had my own system for joining the hexagons together which included laying the tail of the thread under subsequent stitches to hold it in place, reinforcing the corners with extra stitches, averaging 18 whip stitches per inch and knotting off the thread at the end twice - once at the end of the stitching and then again back 1/4 inch.  That thread isn't going anywhere.  ;)

Now I just have to decide if I have the guts to hand quilt it.  The part that makes me the most nervous is the fact that where the fabric folds back on itself to make the hexagon shape, I could have 6 layers of fabric plus batting to stitch through. That does not sound easy or fun.  Any advice?  Will quilting this be horrible?  Should I just send it out to be quilted?  (I don't trust myself to machine quilt it after so many hours of work.)

I also have to decide whether or not to applique on a bit of a border or just trim the edges straight.  Binding around each pointy hexagon is not an option, in my opinion.

Hopefully it won't take another 2 1/2 years to finish quilting because I would love to see it on my bed much sooner than that!

I am linking up to the Festival of Hexagons (lots of fun hexie projects there!) and At the End of the Hallway.

If you want more info on how to English paper piece, you can check out this tutorial.

How Hard Can It Be?

Remember these lovelies?  Last time I checked in I was trying to decide what color of spacer hexagons to use between them.  I didn't think it would be so hard to decide, but I have been thinking about fabric choices for a good month.

I started my fabric journey by going to JoAnn's and picking out any fabric that I thought might look good.  These are the short listers.  My cart was Full!

I stacked all of the pattern books on one side of the pattern table and spread out.  Thankfully no one needed to find a pattern that evening.  :)  I took each fabric, unrolled it, laid the hexagons on top, stood back, took pictures, asked the opinions roving employees and still couldn't figure out which one was best.

There were some definite No Ways in the bunch.  Black and whites that made me loopy when I looked at them and solids that were just a bit too boring.  Here are some that made the very short list.

This was the best aqua in the bunch - it actually looks way better in the  picture than it did in the store.

Big black and white dot.  It made my eyes water a bit, but interesting.

A cross hatched print.  It looks ok in the picture, but I wasn't sold on the quality of the fabric or the print.  The hashes are kind of weird when you see them up close.

This black with mini white dots is what I ended up buying.  Then I got home and didn't like it.  Sigh.

More help was needed.  So I took the hexies to the Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild's July meeting which happened to be on color selection.  Perfect!  When Eva Marie asked if there was anyone who had a piece of fabric that they didn't know what color to use with, my hand shot up and we spent some time discussing fabric options.  One side of the room leaned more towards aquas and another towards blacks.

After another week of thinking about it, this is what I chose.  A black with an open circle in gray.  I still don't know if it was the perfect choice or not, but it was my husband's favorite fabric of the bunch, so when in doubt humor the husband.  :)

Here it is so far.  The black is a strong contrast, but I think some bright chunky quilting in perle cottons will soften the black areas.  Now I just need to make more star hexagons so I can make it twice as long and even out the sides.

More Star Flowers

This week I discovered that if I put my feet up and iced them regularly throughout the day they didn't get nearly as swollen as usual.  Oh, the joys of pregnancy!  On the bright side, this gave me a chance to make quite a few new Star Flowers - I think that is what I am going to call them (unless they have a real name?).

My spacer Flea Market Fancy fabric also came in the mail and I got to work joining them together.  I am not so sure about it.

Here are some more flower stars laid over the fabric.  It just looks like a mushy mess to me.  (And I have no idea why my camera refuses to take crisp pictures of these blocks!  Grrr.)  Or am I just not daring?  Both my husband and daughter suggested white fabric instead of the floral.

So here is a roughly edited picture with white spacer hexagons.

 Solid or dotted turquoise?

 

 Gray?

 Or black?  I think a black and white dot might be the best choice.   What do you think?

Thanks for all of your input on the star flowers and the fair block.  I really, really, really truly appreciate it even if I a total rubbish at responding to comments.  I decided to make the Belted Star block for the fair and it is perfect -- except for one fatal flaw.  I'll unpick it and tell you the whole story soon.  :)

Mimicking Mary

Gypsy Kisses by Mary, via Flickr

Have you ever fell in love with someone's style?  It was love at first sight when I saw Mary's quilt Gypsy Kisses.  I started following her blog, Molly Flanders, and have seriously loved everything I have seen.  I totally want to be more like Mary.  :)  I even tried out chunky quilting with perle cotton on a pillow recently - chunky/primitive quilting with various bright colors of perle cotton is Mary's signature quilting style.  Love it!

I wanted to start another English paper piecing project this summer that I could bring with me to the park and pool and decided that I wanted to recreate the look and feel of Gypsy Kisses.  Ironically, I have not been able to work on the project at the pool or the park - those crazy kids want me to play with them, not sit and stitch - who would have thought?  ;)  But I have been working on it every evening after the kids go to bed.  I love to put my swollen feet up and stitch while watching a show.

Anyway....This was my first block - a star in a hexagon.  Nice, but lacking.  Would Mary just use one color of gray for the star?  No way!

So I gave it another try.  Stars with two black/white/gray fabrics.  Perfect!

They look pretty good all together, but...

...I think I am going to spread them out and put some turquoise floral fabric in between the star hexagons.

I am planning on using Turquoise Bouquet from Flea Market Fancy.  It mimics the fabric in Gypsy Kisses and I love it as fabric, but I must admit that I am going out of my comfort zone here.  I tend to use smaller prints and don't usually do bright and scrappy.  What do you think?  Will it work?  Am I crazy?
  

I have made 14 star hexies in the last three weeks and have enjoyed every moment.  Only 30 or 40 to go!  :)