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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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
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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.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

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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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