Category Archives: Hexagon quilts

Cameron’s Windmills Quilt … Again

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Yes, I know this has been shown before but I have it entered in this week’s Quilting Gallery contest which is for hexagons. There are some beautiful quilts entered, so please go have a look and vote for your favourites. Yes, I said favourites as you can vote for two entries this week.

With a little advance planning I was able to get the machine quilting done within a couple of hours and had only 4 thread ends to work in. All straight line quilting, of course, as that’s my skill level when quilting by machine. When I found this flannel a few years ago, I bought enough yardage of it to use as backing for 3 baby quilts.

I’ve found that a 2″ hexagon is perfect for a label as it gives me lots of room to write. I baste the turn-under allowance down as that makes the appliqueing on to the back go very quickly. In this picture it’s ironed to a piece of freezer paper to stabilize it when writing on it.

The quilt was made with “other” half 1″ hexagons which I printed using Inklingo. I love tessellating designs and had started the quilt top long before we knew about the new baby. However, when I learned my cousin’s son and his wife were going to have another baby I knew what this particular UFO was meant to be. Once I made that decision, it only took a couple of weeks to finish piecing it. With a tessellating design like this, there are tons of opportunities for continuous stitching which makes the piecing go very quickly. Of course, using Inklingo to print the shapes on the back of the fabric makes it even faster as there’s no basting over papers and removing them.

The blocks are very quick to make with a simple running stitch. Because of the matching points, there’s no guessing at where exactly the joins should be made. I think I was making upwards of 20 or so of these blocks in an evening and then had the fun of arranging and putting them together into the top. I have lots of them left and plan to make another of these little tessellating quilts at some point.

They press beautifully.

Last night we bought a new vacuum cleaner. Baxter was eyeing the box it’s in, definitely not impressed. He is not a fan of vacuum cleaners at all, but with a long-haired cat a good vacuum cleaner is an absolute must for us.

Four Little Quilt Tops

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First up, the little tumbler star table runner that finishes at 12 x 48. I’m Not sure exactly how I’ll quilt this one, but it’s going to be pretty basic.

Second, the 24″ square tumbler star doll quilt. This one is going to be quilted, I think, to emphases the stars.

Third, China Plates. I think I’m going to do straight line quilting through the middle of the hexagons.

The fourth is the pink and red Winding Ways that finishes at 27″. I’m going to quilt to emphasize the circle effect. This one I should have done before now. It would be great  to have this one hanging around Valentine’s Day. Next year it will be!

All of them have the batting cut and ready and I’ll get the backings and bindings ready for them on Friday. I’m going to baste some temporary muslin borders on each of the four so that they’re large enough to put in the hoop and I can get right to the edges, although I may do the table runner without a hoop. I think that will work as long as I baste it well enough.

Why have I got all 4 of them out? Because I really want to get back to hand quilting the Ferris Wheel quilt, but would like to use these tops as my warm-up quilts.

Last night I designed yet another quilt in EQ but that’s it for a while. I need more stitching time! I’m almost three-quarters of the way through making one of the pieced borders for Scrappy Star. Once I get that done and added to the main body of the quilt, I’ll decide whether it needs the final pieced border I was thinking of adding.

Baxter is 10 months old today. He’s growing so fast now that we’re seeing changes in him almost daily and his silver markings are starting to show more and more.

Half Hexagon Madness!

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Just over a year ago, when Cameron’s Windmills was finished, I put the box containing all the extra pieces away. Over the past while I have been thinking about them and couldn’t resist making a few. I love tessellating designs and this is definitely a fun stitch.

There are a fair number of the “other half” hexagons in the box, so I have a feeling another small quilt may be in the making.

I continued on my journey of working in EQ last night. While I am getting more used to it and it’s fun to see design ideas on the screen, I prefer playing with real fabric. That said, I have another idea that I’ve wanted to play with for months. For this particular design I have in mind, it’s going to make a lot more sense to work it out in EQ before I start printing on fabric so I may just work on it for a while today.

Even though we’ve had quite the cold snap, Baxter still was hanging out on the windowsill.

A Long-Forgotten Project

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It has been a very long time since I last worked on this. I made the long strips of hexagons months and months ago and had joined about 5 of them and then it sat. And sat and sat some more. Over the past week or so I have spent some time on it and have joined a couple more of the strips to what was already joined. It’s nice easy stitching, which is just perfect for some evenings.

I press as I add each strip. When I made the king-sized 1″ hexagon and elongated hexagon quilt, I left all the pressing to the end. It took next to forever to press that top and my back was practically breaking from the hours I spent at the ironing board. Lesson well and truly learned!

Mr. Q.O. was playing around with photo editing software and turned a Baxter photo into a black and white photo.

Red and White Stars

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The first row of the stars is almost together. Two more full stars and a couple of partial stars and row 1 will be finished. This is turning into the project I want to work on when I’m tired, as it’s a fast and easy stitch. The camera wouldn’t, for some reason, read the red fabric well. I’m going to join rows as I stitch so that when the stitching is finished, the top will be finished as well. Once a couple of rows are together, I think we’ll take this out to the roof garden and see if we can get a better shot outdoors.

You may have noticed I’ve been changing the blog around a lot this week. Finally, I’ve got it to the point I’m happy with it. So no more changes for a while.

Baxter was 3 months old on Saturday and we got this shot of him. He’s definitely getting longer and I think we’ll soon see the wonderful Maine Coon tail.

Red and White Stars

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There was a fair bit of printing and cutting going on here over the weekend. All the 1″ hexagons are printed, about one-fifth of the 2″ hexagons are ready and 88 of the star points printed and cut. There’s something about having all these pieces ready to stitch that I find irresistible.

The blue and white quilt that’s in my blog header has always been a favourite and one that I wanted to make again. I’ve started it in red and white and am contemplating making a third one with every star in a different colour, although the multi-coloured one will likely be made with smaller shapes.

It’s a fast stitch as the stars go together in just a couple of minutes. One of the things I love about this design is that when I finish adding the stars to one another, the top is done. No blocks to join into rows or rows into the top. And there are tons of continuous stitching opportunities.

Baxter is an absolute delight. He has two speeds; asleep and racing around. Getting a picture of him awake is going to be a challenge as, when he’s awake, he’s on the move and at lightning speed. I love this shot of him as it really shows the colour of his eyes.

Baby Quilt Top Finished

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It’s pressed and ready to baste.  Hopefully that will happen this afternoon.  It finished at 38 x 27.  Names for quilts usually don’t present a problem for me but not this time.  I cannot come up with a name I like at all.  Maybe once I start quilting it something will come to me that works for it.  Suggestions are more than welcome.

We’re in the midst of doing some reorganizing and, as part of that reorganization, I’m hoping to free up an area in the apartment where I can use a wall as a design wall.  That would be great for photographing something like this little quilt.  For today’s photo, we laid it out on the floor and Smudge had to immediately come to inspect.

Monday I spent a bit of time trying to get more comfortable with EQ.  Today I plan to spend more time.  I am not finding it a very intuitive program at all, but hopefully it will become easier the more time I spend using it.

We think that Smudge has turned a corner.  He started eating a lot on his own on the weekend.  And eating.  And eating some more.  That was a huge relief!  The next step will be getting him off the kitty junk food and back on to some of the better foods.  We also managed to find some foods that have no tuna in them that he likes.  Here he was relaxing after one of his meals.

This picture of Lester makes me laugh.  He looks like he’s sleeping sitting up.

Getting Closer

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Another hour or two of stitching, and all the edge pieces will be attached and it will be time to press and baste the baby quilt.  I’m thinking that a scrappy binding made up of ’30s prints will be what I choose for this.

Because I normally match my thread colour to the pieces I’m stitching, to finish off a spool of thread isn’t something that happens frequently as a spool will last a very long time.  Because of the scrappy nature of the baby quilt, I’ve been using a peachy pink heirloom cotton thread which seems to melt into the seams of every colour for piecing and on Wednesday night actually used the very last bit on the spool.

I’ve not been doing well in responding to comments this week or in leaving comments.  There’s no real good excuse for this other than I’ve been dealing with some news about changes in one company with which I work which has left me rather drained.  I really do appreciate and read every comment and hope to get caught up on the replies and comments over the next day or two.

Smudge was posing for the camera Wednesday.  He has always been a camera ham but, for the past month or so, hasn’t been quite as interested.  However, on Wednesday when he heard the camera being turned on, he definitely started striking poses.  I think it’s another sign he’s feeling better.

Lester was caught in a funny pose in the kitty bed.

Baby Quilt Almost Done

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The main piecing, other than the pieces around the edges, is done.  I’ve started adding the edge pieces along one side so know it won’t take long to finish adding them and then it will be complete.  I have a piece of flannel that’s perfect for the backing and there’s batting on hand, so this won’t take long now to finish and have ready.  The only thing I’ll be waiting for is what the baby’s name is once it’s born and I can add that to the label.

I’ve been contemplating what, if any, quilting goals I have for 2011.  I am not making resolutions because I know I’d break them.  But goals?  Goals is another matter.  I have a few.  I’d like to try making a small quilt in solids.  I’ve never worked with just solids and am not sure how much I’ll enjoy that, but I want to give it a try.

My second goal, and probably the biggest one, is to try to limit myself to making small quilts when I start anything new this year.  I have many UFOs that are going to be large quilts on the go as it is, all of which I want to spend time on, and hopefully complete, this year.  Summer Picnic Dish, the Harpsichord quilt, my POTC blocks, the Pickled Ladies, the clamshell diamonds in Kaffe fabrics, the Christmas Feathered Star quilt (and probably some others I’ve forgotten at the moment) are quilts I want to finish sooner rather than later.

I also know that when I get ideas, some of which are in the ideas book already, I want to be able to play with fabric.  Playing with designs on the computer, while it is a good way to get an idea about how something might work, just doesn’t seem to be the best way for me.  I want to see what it looks like in fabric. So small quilts is the answer.  Then, if something I’ve made as a small quilt top really appeals, I can set it aside to make as a larger quilt.

A third goal is to make sure I have one thing added to the Christmas box every month.  2010 taught me a very good lesson; that I can’t count on having all the time to do things for Christmas in the last 4 or 5 weeks of the year.

Saturday was an incredibly mild day.  We broke records and had temperatures in the 52 Fahrenheit range.  It was lovely to think it was that mild on January 1.  Only a dozen weeks or so and we’ll be starting to get spring weather.  I’m already counting the days until we go back to Daylight Savings Time. Along with the mild weather on Saturday, we had fog.

Smudge seemed to be looking at a quilt book as he reclined on the couch.

Lester posed for the camera Sunday night.

Progress on Baby Quilt

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It’s growing but not quite as quickly as I was thinking it would.  I’m still hoping to have the piecing finished by the time the weekend is over and, with any luck, have it ready to quilt by mid-week next week.  I got distracted from stitching as we were watching the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland last night. Normally, I watch/listen and stitch with no problems but that was so well done that there was much less stitching done than normal.

Smudge did eat a bit on his own on Wednesday, but not enough.  So the syringe feeding continues.  We are more and more convinced he has decided he likes being fed and have jokingly renamed him Pasha Puss. He doesn’t mind the syringe feeding at all, puts up no fuss about it and basically just lies or sits there while he’s being fed.  Next we think he’ll be expecting us to peel him grapes!  I’m not altogether sure what this look is saying other than perhaps, “I’m very comfortable here, so please bring my food in liquid form and feed me!”

Lester is quite interested in the syringe feeding and usually is right there supervising.