Fear Not the Y-Seam! / Beauties Pageant 340

Back in 2017, when I was still a baby quilter, I believed the rumors about machine-sewing y-seams, and they were to be avoided at all costs! Pattern after pattern, after all, reassured me and other potential buyers that its design could be replicated successfully—no y-seams required. 

Four years into my quilting adventures, however, I bought a hexagon die for my AccuQuilt Go and decided to see for myself: Were y-seams such a big deal?

In short, no. Sewing them was not the same experience as chain-piecing other projects, but it wasn’t hard, either. I started with a simple baby-size project of diecut hexagons ...

And graduated to more-complicated designs ...

When people asked whether I would turn such designs into patterns the one-word negative response was always the same, though: y-seams.

Until now! The same technique that has most quilters running for the hills is exactly what QuiltCon workshop participants are looking for. 

If you’re planning on attending QuiltCon 2027 in Atlanta and would like to try your hand at y-seams, let me introduce you to Circa 1870 ...

I sewed Circa 1870 in 2017, and it hang at QuiltCon 2019, in Nashville. This project is a great introduction to y-seams. The hexagons aren’t too small to make you think you might want to sew them together by hand. They’re also not too big and unwieldy to work with. I will hold two session of this three-hour class, billed as No-Handwork-Required Hexagons, on Thursday, February 25, 2027. By the end of class, you’ll be armed with the experience and formal pattern (including videos) to finish this top at home!

Even if you won’t be attending QuiltCon, I want to know: Have you tried y-seams, and what’s your verdict on them?

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So Many 2.5-Inch Squares, So Little Time / Beauties Pageant 229

Ever since last week’s post, I’ve had precuts on my mind—namely, minicharm packs and the 2.5-inch squares in them. It’s rare that I purchase minicharm packs because they don’t contain that much fabric and the project options for them are limited. But I’m a big fan of 2.5-inch squares overall. In fact, my scraps are stored in two forms: Substantial pieces are sorted by color and put in a drawer; odd-shaped pieces are cut into 2.5-inch squares and stored in a plastic bin. Currently, that plastic bin is overflowing. It’s a treasure chest of different fabric collections and colors, and I get excited thinking of the potential that lies there. But what does one do with an abundance of 2.5-inch squares? I looked back in the From Bolt to Beauty archives and came up with a list of projects large and small.

 

Granny Square Quilt

I finished my Scrappy Granny Square Quilt back in 2021. I cut and sewed over twelve hundred squares for it, so as you can imagine, it was a slow project, one I picked up to make a block or two and then put down for a few weeks (or months). There is no pattern for this. I simply pieced the a block as laid out below, trimmed it while trying to maintain those points, and sewed everything together with a 1.5-inch (unfinished) sashing. For more pictures of this finish, click here.

 

Pixelated Picture Quilt

Pixelated picture quilts had a moment in the spring of 2022 when Tilda released its free Embroidery Flowers pattern. I quickly scooped up a kit that included all 46 colors to make the project, but there are bunches of pixelated quilts out there. Kitchen Table Quilting’s fire truck tutorial is another one (learn more about my version here and here). If a quick Google search doesn’t give you options that pique your interest, you could use a cross-stitch pattern to make something that does.

 

Hexagon Projects

Minicharm squares are the perfect size to make projects that incorporate the hexagon technique pioneered by Nicole Daksiewicz of Modern Handcraft. I’ve made multiple, all of which have been pillows or bags. And although I steer away from using commercially produced minicharm packs, the Market Bag I sewed required just one. Read more about my hexagon projects at these links:

• A rainbow pillow
• A pillow in Denyse Schmidt fabrics
• A hexagon-adorned Market Bag

Are you like me, not-so-secretly sitting on a stash of 2.5-inch squares. And if so, what do you plan on doing with them? Inspire us with your ideas in the comments!

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Diary of a Quilter's Square Deal / Beauties Pageant 210

Years ago, I bought a copy of Amy Smart’s Fabulously Fast Quilts. The book features 12 patterns that all use slick shortcuts to get to a finished quilt top faster. Although I’ve paged through the designs many times over the years, I only recently made one: the baby size version of Square Deal pictured here.

I love the bundle of Spectacle, by Christian Robinson for Cotton and Steel, that I picked up second-hand on Instagram, and its busy prints were the perfect foil for Square Deal’s simple piecing. Following Amy’s instructions, I stacked up fat quarters, cut them up into the required pieces, and mixed them up before sewing them together.

Originally, I used low-volume prints throughout the quilt top but, deciding the result was too busy for my taste, ripped them out of every other block and replaced them with a cream solid. Ah, yes—that’s much better. (See the quilt top before this fix here.)

I’m never sure what to do with fabrics like this hexagon print (would you consider it a panel?). I made the most of it, though, by framing it out with the fish fabric and using it on the back of the project. In the end, that use-it-up print has created a something-special quilt back. I love that! 

Fabulously Fast Quilts is long out of print, and now that its publisher, That Patchwork Place (an imprint of Martingale), has decided to close, that will not change. I’m happy to have it in my library, though: There aren’t any must-make designs in it, but its patterns are simple and timeless. I am sure to need it again in the future.

Do you have any quilting books like that on hand? I have some I have never made anything out of but still deserve a spot in my collection.

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Watching QuiltCon from Home / Beauties Pageant 163

Hello? Is anyone out there reading blogs this week? Social media has me convinced that the entire modern quilting world is in Arizona without me. : /

QuiltCon is happening in Phoenix, like, right now. The show is open, and in-person workshops are taking place. Prize winners, if you haven’t heard, were announced on Wednesday. (You can see the full list of winners on the QuiltCon website.)

I don’t have any quilts in the show this year, but a few of my quilts have hung at past QuiltCons, in Savannah (2017), Nashville (2019), and Austin (2020).

Here’s the roundup ...

Mix and Mingle appeared at QuiltCon Savannah. There was a nine-patch challenge that year, so I made a huge one and then cut it up and sewed it back together. Because this was my first show submission and it was accepted and I traveled to Savannah, Mix and Mingle has a special place in my heart.

Circa 1870 showed at QuiltCon Nashville, the most recent QuiltCon I attended. I love this beauty and the backing fabric that inspired the palette. I have had many requests to write a pattern for this design, but making it requires many Y-seams. (Enough said.)

47XY+21 hung at the same time as Circa 1870. I have the privilege of raising a son with Down syndrome, and 47XY+21 is about that parenting journey. World Down Syndrome Day is next month, so I think I’ll post more about that project—and what I, as the maker, got out of creating it—in the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can read about my amazing son here.

Love Boldly, the design behind last week’s mini quilts, showed at QuiltCon Austin. I wasn’t able to attend the conference that year, so I took special delight in this picture, which Quilt Pattern Mart Founder Heather Kinion took of the show floor. Those hearts are so big and bright, you can pick them out from the sea of quilts! 

 

You can read the original post about Love Boldy here. Info about the pattern is available here.

What is your take on quilt shows? Do you attend them? Do you submit your projects to them? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Glint and Glimmer / Beauties Pageant 135

In between moments of drizzle yesterday, I managed to get some help for a quick photo shoot. I’m calling this lovely—albeit currently wrinkly—finish Glint and Glimmer.

You might recall that this was a neglected WIP until recently, when I decided to use a submission deadline from Curated Quilts to get myself in gear and finish it. For the record, I did submit it to the gallery in the magazine’s upcoming polygon issue, but it was not accepted. This was no surprise. In my opinion, Curated Quilts has an improv vibe and likes quilts accompanied by interesting backstories, and Glint and Glimmer fits into neither of those categories. It was worth a shot, though, and the opportunity helped me wrap up this project!

As you can see from the pics, I went along with my plan to quilt this top with 12 weight Aurifil thread. Some of the quilting was done by machine; some was done by hand. I gave each color of gemstone its own unique quilting treatment and then quilted along an inner hexagon here and there where I thought it was needed.

At 37 inches by 48 inches, the final product ended up being smaller than most of my quilts. I could have kept piecing, but I really thought this hexagon experiment had succeeded and I was satisfied with the results.

For the first time, I also finished the binding with chunky hand stitching. I will definitely be doing that again in the future!

This post would not be complete without the picture below, a shot of Glint and Glimmer alongside the resident photo bomber here at From Bolt to Beauty world headquarters, Rose. If you read last week’s post, you know that Rose is getting a baby sister on Saturday. For all you wacky dog lovers out there, I’ll be posting puppy pics in the stories on my Instagram feed and in the grid on Rose’s Instagram feed—you know, just in case you can’t wait until next week’s blog post to see the newcomer! : )

(What’s that you say? You didn’t know Rose has her own IG account? Yes, we’re that kind of dog owners—HA!)

Related links:

* Returning to My Ombre Hexagons blog post

* Machine-Sewing with 12 Weight Thread blog post

* How I Machine-Piece Hexagons tutorial

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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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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:

• Circa 1870
• Happy Hexie Baby Quilt
• How I Machine-Piece Hexagons

 

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