Friday, May 28, 2021

Machine-Sewing with 12 Weight Thread / Beauties Pageant 131

If you read my post from May 14, you know that I recently resurrected an old hexie WIP with the hope of completing it by June 10. All in all, the process is going pretty well, and I’m confident that I’ll have it finished and photographed in another two weeks!

I really enjoy machine-sewing hexagons. (I know I’m in the minority here.) Contrary to almost all tutorials on machine-sewing hexies (except mine!), I don’t sew the pieces into columns and then sew the columns together. Instead, I sew my hexies into trios and then sew the trios together. The process feels organic and surprisingly freeing—a nice break from the usual rigid routine of chain-piecing blocks into rows and those rows into a quilt top.

So far, quilting this project has been similarly unstructured; I’ve been feeling my way through it. I started by quilting in between the hexagons with Aurifil Natural White in 12 weight. This was a first for me. I used a matching polyester Gutermann 40 weight thread, my usual choice for piecing, in the bobbin. The process has been pretty smooth—my top thread has broken just once! My only complaint is that the thicker thread prevents me from retracing any of my quilting lines. Read that as: I’ve been starting and stopping a lot, and burying a ton of threads. Blerg.

From there, I outlined some of the lighter blue bits in Aurifil Wedgewood, also in the 12 weight. I didn’t plan the blue quilting in advance, but I like it. Now that it’s done I’m deciding where to go and what to do next. (I have white, blue, and gray thread, and I’d prefer not to go buy more.) Maybe some gray lines radiating from the green gems or embroidery-like stars on the magenta ones? I’m convinced that some hand-quilting is in order.

I am open to any and all suggestions about the quilting here. What would you do to accentuate that these shapes are gemstones?

 

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Friday, May 21, 2021

Pageant Highlight Reel / Beauties Pageant 130

Happy Friday, friends! I am making good progress on my ombre hexies, the project I updated you on last week. It’s really satisfying to work on something that’s been on the back burner for as long as those hexagons have been. Finishing a WIP is almost always an easier process than I think it will be. Somehow the tasks at hand seem bigger and more complicated when left to my memory for a year (or two!).

I won’t have any new pictures to share until I get started with the quilting, so I thought we could take a few minutes to look at some of the beauties you have completed recently ...

First up, at the top of the post, is Quilting Gail’s finish for the Stay at Home Round Robin. This event, hosted by Gail and six other bloggers, wrapped up last month, and this link will take you to a parade of all the finishes, from both organizers and participants. Spoiler alert: Everyone had a great time sewing their project, and another round robin is scheduled for January 2022!

Last month, Vasudha, of Storied Quilts, unveiled her Kaleidoscope Churn. This original design was included in the summer issue of Quilter’s World. It was the first time a pattern from Vasudha was published in a magazine. I am oohing and aahing over every aspect of this project. The complementary colors! The quilting! Congratulations, Vasudha, on a beautiful finish and the milestone accomplishment as a designer.

Now it’s your turn to show us the beauties you’ve finished up in recent weeks. Share your finishes in the linky below!

 

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The pageant rules are simple:
  • Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
  • Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
  • Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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Click here to enter

Friday, May 14, 2021

Returning to My Ombre Hexagons / Beauties Pageant 129

I’m fairly motivated by nature—I like being busy and crossing items off my to-do list—but every so often I need a push to get a particular WIP over the finish line. So when I learned that Curated Quilts was looking for gallery submissions for its upcoming polygon issue, an old hexagon project came to mind. Do I think this quilt will get into the fall issue’s quilt gallery? Probably not, but that’s not the point. This call for submissions gives me a deadline—June 10!—to finish something that might otherwise languish in my closet for another year or two.

I last worked on this quilt top in late 2019, setting it aside at the time to tackle higher priorities. Most of the hexagons here were paper-pieced, and all of them were subsequently machine-pieced. (Machine-piecing hexagons is easier than you may think. Check out my tutorial on it here.) All of that is to say, this is not the fastest project to chip away at, but I may be able wrap it up in the next month.

I was thankful to discover that Past Michelle put me in a good position to get back to these hexies. (I love it when Past Michelle helps me out!) She numbered different sections of the top and took ample pictures of the layout, so I was able to re-create and immediately start piecing what had already been cut out and decided upon. Now I need to make some decisions, and I’m hoping you’ll help me ...

This project started as a way to play with ombre fabric, using its color gradations to mimic how light is reflected on gemstones. It’s an experiment that worked. I was reluctant, however, to create a top that was just row after row of these pretty fabric gems. I omitted a stone here and there and have laid out the hexagons so that some will sit at the edge of the quilt and others will extend beyond it. What do you think of that plan?

Also, I’m hoping to use the quilting to make this project a special one. I have some Aurifil 12 weight on hand in white, gray, and blue. I’m thinking of machine-quilting in the white lines between the gemstones with the white thread. (I’ve never done this before, but I understand that I should use a 40 weight in the bobbin when I use 12 weight on the top.) That’s just to stabilize the quilt top. Then I’m thinking of adding hand-quilting detail to the individual stones, further playing up the idea of light reflecting off of them.


And then the plan is to bind the project with one of the blues above. If I’m feeling brave, I may even finish off the binding with a chunky running stitch in blue 12 weight.

Do you have any other ideas on where I can go from here with this project? Please share your thoughts in the comments below! (And please refrain from telling my husband that I’m working with a self-imposed deadline. He hates when I set rather random target dates for projects, quilty or otherwise!)

For more from me on machine-pieced hexagons, check out these posts:

 

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The pageant rules are simple:
  • Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
  • Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
  • Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Friday, May 7, 2021

Good Day Sunshine Tutorial / Beauties Pageant 128


Five years ago, I posted a tutorial on Sew Mama Sew for my Good Day Sunshine Quilt. A lot has changed in those five years—most notably, Sew Mama Sew shut down, taking with it tons of information and inspiration—but other things haven’t, and this project, born from my abundance of scraps and love for modern chevrons, is as versatile and relevant today as it was back then. I post it here because I think it’s too good not to. : )


Organizing Your Scraps

Before we delve into the super-simple tutorial, however, let’s talk scraps. I’ve mentioned before that I like scrappy projects with a clear palette and structure. I know that’s not true for everyone, but I thought I’d walk you through how I approach organizing my scraps and pulling a project from them ...

The only hard-and-fast rule I have to scrap organization is that I don’t keep anything smaller than a 2-inch square. (That may pain some of you. I used to keep only pieces that were 2.5-inch squares or larger, so I’ve loosen up over time!) Some scraps—usually the ones that are on the small side or are weird shapes—get cut into 2-inch squares or 2.5-inch squares and get stored in plastic bins based on size. All my larger pieces get sorted by color and neatly arranged in a single dresser drawer. (For real. See a pic here.) I tend to keep Art Gallery scraps, Alison Glass scraps, and other bits I deem extra special in their own Ziploc bag. 
 
 

Determining Your Palette

Those beautiful fabrics on the left of the picture below, from Josephine Kimberling’s Turkish Delight line and the foundation for one of my Sew Together Bags, established the palette for Good Day Sunshine’s pixelated chevrons in true blue, grassy green, gold, gray and navy. Since I was using white as a background color, I tried to use it sparingly in the chevrons to achieve good contrast between them and the background.

When I had culled through my scraps in search of those five colors and had cut all the 2.5-inch squares I could, I had 284 squares—less than half of what I needed! So I went back to my scraps and found the gray floral (bottom left in the picture below). It featured some of the colors I was already using and incorporated orange, which expanded my chevron palette to six colors. I took a second pass through my scraps with my revised plan and found almost all of the 580 squares this quilt calls for.


Cutting From Yardage

Like I said earlier, developing a cohesive palette is key for me when sewing a scrappy quilt, but even my overflowing scrap bin has its limits. I decided to trim a few 2.5-inch strips from yardage so I could better balance the colors for this quilt. A width-of-fabric strip yields 16 squares, adding good variety to the quilt while still leaving a chunk of yardage in the stash for future projects. 

 

Sewing Good Day Sunshine

 

Materials

 

580 patterned 2½" squares for the chevrons (just over 2½ yards of fabric)
2 yards of solid fabric or 25 solid jelly roll strips for the background
½ yard of fabric for the binding*
3½ yards of fabric for the backing*
64" x 76" piece of batting (this provides approximately 3" of overhang on each side)

Finished size: approximately 58" x 70". All seams are ¼".

* If you like wiggle room to account for a miscut or two, buy a bit more binding and backing fabric.

 

Cutting

Note: Cutting instructions presume 42" of usable fabric after selvages are removed.

If you’re using yardage for the background, cut (25) 2½" width-of-fabric (WOF) strips. Then subcut those 25 strips or your 25 solid jelly roll strips into rectangles:

    • Cut (19) 2½" x WOF solid strips into (95) 8" x 2½" rectangles.
    • Cut (2) 2½" x WOF solid strips into (14) 6" x 2½" rectangles.
    • Cut (2) 2½" x WOF solid strips into (14) 4" x 2½" rectangles.
    • Cut (1) 2½" x WOF solid strip into (14) 2" x 2½" rectangles.

     

    Sewing the Base Strips

    Sew the 580 patterned squares into strips of five, for a total of 116 scrappy 10½" x 2½" strips. There’s no need to overthink the fabrics you use in a particular strip, but try to distribute colors evenly.  

    If you like to press your seams open, iron now. Otherwise, you can wait until later and press to one side so that your seams nest nicely.

    Sew 87 of the 95 solid 8" x 2½" rectangles with the 116 scrappy 10½" x 2½" strips to create 29 strips that look like the picture below.

     


    Laying Out and Completing the Strips

    Determine the order in which you want to lay out these strips, trying to distribute the colors evenly throughout the quilt top. Sew the remaining rectangles as illustrated below.

    A: 8" x 2½" solid rectangle on the top; none on the bottom

    B: 6" x 2½" solid rectangle on the top; 2" x 2½" solid rectangle on the bottom

    C: 4" x 2½" solid rectangle on the top; 4" x 2½" solid rectangle on the bottom

    D: 2" x 2½" solid rectangle on the top; 6" x 2½" solid rectangle on the bottom

    E: none on the top; 8" x 2½" solid rectangle on the bottom


    If you are sewing your seams to one side, iron now, alternating the direction between columns.

    Sew the completed columns together. It’s important to note, however, that the bottom of each A column and the top of each E column are ½" longer than the other columns. Wait until you’ve matched seams and sewn the columns together before trimming off that excess.


    Finishing the Quilt

    To make the backing, cut your 3½ yards of backing fabric into two rectangles: 63" x WOF. Sew them along the long side. Quilt and bind your project.

     

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    The pageant rules are simple:
    • Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
    • Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
    • Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

    You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

    Click here to enter