Making out with BOB - the end

I don't think I ever showed this one off. But I assure you, it was finished during lent of 2012.
Making out with BOB (Bag of Blocks), made of sundry 'loose blocks' and fabric from stash, supplemented with newly printed Inklingo-shapes to make it all fit together.
There are 6" blocks, 4.5" blocks, old and new, hexagon flowers, triangles, and fabrics old and new.

... and I love it. Frankly, I do. It is simply quilted. Straight lines. On the machine. By me.
And it has become a favourite cuddle-up-on-the-couch quilt for everyone, because it is neither too big to be cumbersome or too small to be useless.

P.S. I used the pink-and-blue bunny-toile for the back. It is over the top and absolutely wonderful.

Hexagon Alphabet

I have finally moved on the Hexagon letters that I published on the Inklingo Sampler blog in 2011
(see here). There will - in the fullness of time - be better directions for putting it together than is now up at the Sampler-blog, but ... here are the pictures to tide you over :-)

The front, all pieced together and with the border attached.

Backing, pieced from left overs, miscuts and other scraps of the two fabrics used in the top.

Marked up! and with the thread ready to roll.

Gratuitous kitty-picture

A Finished Quilt !!!

Yes, dear Reader, I am proud to tell you, that I have FInally finished my TeaRoses.

Quilted by Sue Baddley of Summit Creek Quilts.
And as of a two days ago, it now also has a binding :-)

AND as of today, there's even pictures :-)

Front of the quilt

And the pieced backing, using remains of the collection I used for the flowers

A corner-view

Sort-of close-up of the quilting. I chose an all-over, because I don't like my quilts too stiff. A good custom-job would probably be extremely beautiful, but also make the quilt really stiff and unyieldy. I like it as it is.

Gorgeous Hexagons

This past week-end, I spent a wonderful couple of days in a vicarage in Jutland (Louns if you want to look up the place on Google Maps or the like).One of the things we did was getting DFreind to the point where she can finish her second quilt-top. Yes. Her second.
It is made using the 1" shapes from Inklingo Collection # 1 (a sold-out CD), and is looking spectacular. And yes, you can still get most of the shapes here in downloadable collections, viz. the 1" hexagon collection and the 1" diamond collection. The only shape used here, which is no longer available (unless you have Collection 1) is the 1" elongated hexagon.

The picture does not do the colours justice, just so you know. It is far more vibrant in real life than it is here. I can hardly wait for it to be a finished top, so we can send it off to a quilter :-)

Hybrid-piecing Hexagons

Hand-piecing hexagons is - for me - the natural way to do it.
Occasionally (rarely, but it happens) I get impatient and feel that I 'need' to move forward faster, and that is when machine-piecing comes into the picture.

BUT, machine-piecing hexagons seems to me to be a cruel and unusual way of doing hexagon-blocks. My sewing-machine and I like each other well enough - most of the time - but we are not on what you might call intimate terms, and me doing inset seams of any kind on the machine is not a sight to be soon forgotten (no matter how fervently you might wish that it was, and that your ears would stop burning)

Hybrid-piecing to the rescue !

Machine-piece the straight, not-inset seams, and then hand-piece the 'troublesome' inset seams. And because that sounds complicated (but isn't) here is a small description, with pictures.

I would like, at this point, to apologize for the quality of the pictures. I am not a professional photographer, and getting clear pictures when doing closeups like this, is - frankly - a bear to do. Know that I did it as well as I could. If you have trouble seeing how a picture could possibly illustrate the point I'm trying to make, double-click on it, and it will open 'on its own' in a (much) larger size.


Lay out your block (in this case, a double GFG-flower). I prefer to lay it out with the back up.
(and yes, eagle-eyed reader, there is a number on one of the hexagons. That is because it is printed from the CD. These hexies have been around for a loooong time)







Machine-piece into what might be called hexagon-strips.

Piece edge to edge (!)







When cutting the pieces apart, trim the thread on both sides, so that no ends 'stick out'. On the picture (right), you can see that one side of the seam has been trimmed, the other hasn't.
Trim them all.

Doing this means, that you can 'open' the seam when hand-piecing the strips together, but it still leaves just (!) enough thread to ensure that the whole seam doesn't unravel on you. If you feel iffy about having only 0.25" of thread-end between you and an unraveling seam, clip the thread a little bit further out, and then, with your needle, unpick one stitch at each end. You can do that while piecing.

If you want to press as you go, this is the point where you press the strips.
It isn't necessary, because the rest of your stitching will be by hand, so you can just leave well alone and press it all when the flower is finished. If you really want to press, press all seams the same way. Yes. Same way. It will work out and will press up a treat in the end.


Once all the strips for the flower has been machine-pieced, the hand-piecing part comes.
Since your pieces have been prepared with Inklingo, use a plain running-stitch.

At corners, take a backstitch, so you get both of two pieces anchored to the same match-mark on the single-piece (click on the picture if you have trouble seeing the back-stitch ... I do). Do not break the thread, but 'pass' from one hexagon to the next until the whole strip has been pieced.
Then move on to the next one.


When all the hexagon-strips have been joined, press your double hexagon flower.

It will press flat a treat, and all the intersections will open beautifully.





Requirements :
One of the (many) Inklingo 60-degree hexagon-collections.
1 flower-centre hexagon
6 inner-flower hexagons
12 outer-flower hexagons

Repeat as desired :-)

Another one bites the dust

This is a finished quilt-top. Not a finished quilt, but at least it is a finished top.

Project was started in late August 2008, and have been stitched on rarely. Until this May, where it moved to the top of the list, and became my priority project.
The blocks are entirely hand-pieced, but the joining of the blocks is by machine.
For the longest time, I called it 'Rectangular Hexagons', but after the previous quilt was finished and up on the design-wall, and this one went up (while the last blocks were pieced), DH said that it looked like old-fashioned, English Tea Roses, so that's the name.
TeaRoses.

In May, I decided to make an effort to finish this top, before my b'day this year, and I'm proud to see that I met my goal.
Now on to piecing the backing.

Going on

Well I'm progressing slowly, but surely on the Hexagon quilt.
Now two thirds of it is together.

And that's about what I'm getting done ... which is much more than nothing.

Other than that, I'm reading, and leafing through quilt-history books, and listening to music, and doing nothing in particular.

Working hard at wasting the last week of my vacation. Come August 1st, and I need to get back to studying and preparing and taking notes for classes. BUT not yet. Not yet.

Weather is, as can be seen on the picture on the right, rainy. Interspersed with showers of rain. Unless it is drizzling.
Naturally there is the occasional pour-down, but mostly, it's just rain.

A day of prayer

Well, in the wake of the horrible happenings in Norway, I've turned off the TV and the radio and all the rest.
I know what happened is horrible. I know it is devastating now, and will continue to be so for the survivors, probably for the rest of their lives.
I know, that thousands of lives are going to be wrecked because of this.

It is beyond words.

I don't want to be caught by a churning TV and endless repetitions of what happened, talked about either in sombre tones, or in the slightly shrill, breathless voices of reporters trying to wring the last drop of drama out of what really isn't a drama, but a tragedy;
instead I've sat down myself to stitch, and to reflect, and to pray.

And I'm halfway there on the hexagon-rectangle TeaRoses.

Very restful colours, and I certainly need those today.

Progressing on the hexagons

Not much progress on any Sunflowers.
BUT, I have some rows together on the rectangular hexagons, or TeaRoses as DH would have it. One third of the top is now together, and they are, even if I say so myself, looking good.

Now, if only the joining of blocks into strips, and the joining of strips into wider strips, wasn't so mind-bogglingly boring, I might be persuaded to work faster, but procrastination lures around every corner, and sometimes even dances right in front of my eyes.
And you know what Oscar Wilde said about temptation. Whoever can resist a temptation, doesn't deserve it.
I am very deserving today.

And just because, here's my kitty basket-case. Most of the cat is rolling over the edges, and bursting out over the top, as dough which raises, but you see, there are some blocks in that basket, and as long as I persist in sitting here, without a quilt laid out for her to rest on, she has to make do.
Basket case.

Red and shirting

Since I have too much that I 'ought' to be doing, nothing of that gets done. I need to make another 5 Passacaglia-blocks (at least) to replace the ones that got taken out of the equation, but ... instead of those, hexagons happen.

Made with Inklingo (naturally), with 3" sides. Mostly reds and shirtings, but a wee bit of yellow is in there when a visible third colour is necessary.

And you can find directions on how to make all the stars on the right on the Inklingo Sampler blog ... stars and a few other hexagon-blocks with 3" sides.

Inklingo KISS

... and in this case, KISS means Keep It Simple, Stitchers.
I'm taking a leaf out of Cathi's book, and sat me down this morning to stitch something with one of the new Inklingo Collections. I have resisted the Octagons that both she and Martha are already making, but since I "ordered" the 2" diamonds, I felt I had better start using them.
SO, I give you a Texas Star with 4" sides. Made with the 2" diamonds in the Inklingo KISS 102 Collection, and the Starpoints and 1" hexagon from the Inklingo Collection # 1.

I think I'll print another handful of starpoints and diamonds and hexagons, and make a nice set of coasters to have around as a white elephant :-)

Boredom and remedies

I knew I would be bored at work yesterday. I am a sub. at that place, and have a 3 hour break in the middle of the day some days, seeing that it's a public office, and we have to have a late opening day at least once a week. So, everything closes down from 1 to 4. And since it is not "my" office, I cannot do any of the zillion small tasks that are postponed. I can only do "this much" and nothing more. The tenured staff needs their priorities, filing and organizational systems respected. Also, I live too far away to go home, and 3 hours really is a lot of time, if you are on top of your work. I am fortunate enough to be that at the moment so ... what to do.

Well, I came prepared.

I brought some sewing and a DVD to watch on the 'puter. The newest BBC "Sense and Sensibility", (imdb-entry with list of cast etc. here)and my present "carry along and work on forever" project. Rectangle hexagons.

Got another rectangle made, and watched most of S&S at work, and finished it off when I got home.
And how do I like it ?
Well ... its major flaw is, that it is not the Emma Thompson version. The only thing that was clearly better in this one, was Edward Ferrars. I like Hugh Grant a lot, and find him charming in 4 weddings and Notting Hill, but I think his playing EF in the old (movie) version, was the one disastrous mis-casting in that one.

The major flaw with the new one, however, is (to me) that I cannot see Willoughby as instantly appealing. He is not at all appealing, romantic or dashing to me. I found his acting in Mamma Mia flat and unintersting, and thought it probably had to do with having a quite uninteresting part, but that does not seem to be the case. To any and all of you who love him, I apologize. He simply does not click with me.
I can sympathize with Marianne not falling instantly in love with Brandon in this version, and her eventual joining up with him, but ... Willoughby ... no.
I guess that Willoughby, Wickham (in P&P), and Henry Crawford (MP) have the same problem. They need to be charming, handsome and urbane, but also need to be seriously bad news ... and to find a young enough actor to pull that off seems very difficult indeed.

So. Do I recommend this version ? I really don't know. As I wrote, the major flaw is, that it is not the Emma Thompson movie, and for someone who does not have that sort of prejudice, or disliked the movie, I think this one could be a very good introduction to S&S.

And this concludes my first "task" in the Jane Austen Challenge.

Wombat resolved

The give-away is over.

And I went to the random number generator , and it threw up # 11 !

SO, Brenda, looks like you'll have some hexagons soon :-)

I'll send it sometime next week :-)

WOMBATs

Do you you know what that is ?
I don't mean the cute looking animal, I mean the quilty wombats :
Waste Of Money, Batting And Time.

It is a highly personal thing what might become a wombat, but I have found that I have one.
Picture on the left.

It is a Strippy Scrappy Hexagon project.
I've printed lots of Civil War reproduction scraps, and some that are not repros, but are compatible with them. Not all of the printing is equally visible. Some of the fabrics turned out to have quite dark backs, which does not make for visible printing (until and unless someone knows of someone who produces white ink ?)

I've pieced long strips of hexagons on the machine (50 or 51 hexes to a strip), making 40+ strips.
I've started joining the long strips to each other with hand-piecing, because I can't really see any other way of doing it .... and I'm bored stiff !
What is worse, I don't really like the result when I do a mock-up like on the picture.

So the question is : is there anyone out in blog-land who is dying to get a project like this ?

There probably is :-)

Which is why I'm going to celebrate my return to blog-land by giving it away. A project that I dislike (now), but which might be loved by someone else. Fabrics are good quality, are washed, and come from a home with 2 cats and a rabbit (so pet allergics, beware !)

There are 40+ strips, each sewn with 50 hexagons. The side of each hexagon (finished size) is 1", which means about 2" across from point to point. 20 of the strips have been joined in pairs, forming 10 pairs of strips. The finished quilt should be in the vicinity of 60 x 90"

To have a chance at winning, here's what you do :

Leave a comment on this post before noon, GMT, Friday the 12th of June.
In the comment let me know which quilt-pattern you have never made, but would love to do.
Some time after that dead-line, I'll pick a winner, using a random number generator :-)