Maybe Next Year...

Well, it was a hard fought game, but it didn't go our way. The 49ers are done for the year, unfortunately. Sure, the officials made a couple of bad calls against us, but were they game changers? We'll never know.

At least I got some stitching done! Two red stars finished...

...and 16 of the centre hexagons basted and ready for the next batch:

My machine is back from the shop, so tomorrow it is back to the regular programme. It's amazing how much I missed it, even just for a few days! But I'm keen to get a couple more finishes under my belt, so hopefully you'll see those soon!

Go 'Niners!

It's just under two hours now until kick off in the NFC Championship Final between the San Francisco 49ers (yaaay!) and the Seattle Seahawks (booo!). In addition to winning the championship, the winners go on to the Superbowl, so it's a big game!

You can see I am all ready with some red and gold Texas Stars to put together while I watch. How many I finish will depend on how close the game is! Maybe I should rename them California stars? San Francisco stars?

Anyway, go 'Niners!

BFF Setting

So, there's kind of a long story behind the idea for my setting for Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever stitcheries. Feel free to scroll to the end to see the final plan, and if you wonder how I came up with that idea, you can come back to the top and I'll tell you now. :-)

In the summer of 2012 I had two new English Paper Piecing projects in mind -- Texas Star, which is now well under way, and Botanic Roses. Botanic Roses was a reworking of this old UFO that I started almost ten years ago:

This quilt design was on the cover of an old issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting. Each block has 72 pieces! All are hand cut from templates and hand pieced. For me, the cutting was the worst part of that, but there was also a problem with the white-on-white background fabric, which was printed with gummy ink that was terrible for hand sewing. The quilt ground to a halt.

When I learned about English Paper Piecing, and I saw that you could buy these kite shapes precut, I wanted to revive the project, but with a more disciplined colour scheme. Botanic Roses was born. My idea was to interpret my favourite dishes as a quilt:

I thought this would be a good way to restrict the colour palette, but right from the start I had trouble showing all the detail in the rose. I just hated that clumsy hexagon in the middle of the block. I tried many variations:

I played with cutouts:

Finally I realized that the batik fabrics I bought for the project were too busy, and they would blend out all the tricky piecing, so that would just be a waste of time. The whole project went back on the shelf.

This summer, along came BFF, and I suddenly realized that the clumsy hexagon which gave me so much trouble on Botanic Roses, would be just right for the hexagon stitcheries:

It fits perfectly!

So, there you have it. Having seen the photos now, though, I am pretty sure that I will change the background from this pale green solid to something a little darker and with a slight pattern. I didn't want to detract from the blocks at all, but now I see that this doesn't do them justice. One of the threads I'm using is a cooler, jade green, and I'm thinking that may be a good background colour too. Now I have something to shop for again!

Ironically, some of the yellow fabrics that I bought for this quilt have the same gummy ink that set me back on the original version of this quilt almost ten years ago! I can't believe I made the same mistake again! Fortunately it is only here and there, so hopefully it will not be as bad.

And, Botanic Roses is still not dead, I have a new plan for that one too. But there is a fair bit to get done before that...

The Needle and Thread Network has not seen me in a while, so I am linking up with WIP Wednesday there. Happy stitching!

Texas Star Turns 100!

It is just under a year since I started my Texas Star project. Today I have posted Star #101 in the Texas Star Ticker in the right sidebar. Woo hoo! That works out to a little more than 2 per week, which, for me, is pretty good. The ticker idea continues to motivate me, and I have enjoyed photographing almost every single star along the way.

Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement! I realized this month that it will be easier, and maybe faster, to batch the stars a little, rather than doing each one individually from start to finish:

Thinking about which fabric to do next seems to really slow me down, so hopefully this new method will result in less thinking and more sewing!

I also had a complicated plan to sew the individual stars into blocks of four:

...and then join the small blocks into larger blocks:

I originally liked this plan because I thought it would be too boring to join all the stars at the end, and I thought I could assemble the blocks as I go. But, I've abandoned this idea too. There are too many points, the thread is constantly snagging, and the whole thing is very hard to manage.

My new plan is to finish all the stars, mix them together in a large box, and pick them one at a time randomly and sew them onto the whole. I did that with the yoyos, too, and it was a lot of fun. (No, the yoyos are not done yet either!)

I owe a couple more updates on other projects, and I'm very close to a finish on one, but it didn't seem appropriate to show a finish for WIP Wednesday, which I'm linking up to again today. In any case, the weather has turned, and we are enjoying some wonderful crisp northern air, so I think things will start moving again around here!

Hexie Pincushion

Ever since I started English paper piecing, over a year now, I've been wanting a small, stable pincushion to park my threaded needle while I prepare the piece for stitching. I looked at a lot of pincushion patterns, but nothing seemed right. Yesterday I was looking at old cross stitch patterns when I found this pincushion pattern in the July 1997 issue (Number 75) of Needlecraft magazine from the U.K. They made theirs from 1" hexagons, but I scaled it down to 1/2" hexies. I also added some quilting to the top!

I am really happy with how it turned out, but it took some doing! I started with some scraps of Kaffe fabric from my scrap bin:

The one on the right is the Lichen print, which is now out of production. This was my very last bit. If anyone from Westminster reads this, please bring it back! It looks a little scary on the bolt, but it is magic when it's cut.

The green on the left, by the way, was not a big enough piece, so I used a larger scrap of green Millefiore instead.

I was disappointed with how the middle fabric (it's Kirman) turned out after it was cut and stitched. The hexagon shapes are a little lost. I put that one on the bottom! The one on the right, the Lichen, came out great:

The pattern says to attach the side pieces to the bottom flower, but I could see in the magazine photos that this makes the join visible around the top. So I attached the side pieces to the top flower. Here it is with the 1/2 squares inserted between the side hexagons:

At this point I took the paper pieces out of the centre flower and sandwiched it with batting and muslin. It is quilted with #8 perle cotton. Then I carefully (!) trimmed away the extra batting and muslin:

FYI, this is my first completed, hand quilted project! It is so small that I didn't need to do a proper quilting stitch on it, but I am counting it towards my New Year's resolution nevertheless!

The big challenge was joining the top and bottom together. Holding the pieces right sides together, I first sewed five of the side hexagons into the "V"s in the bottom, and then went back and joined in the four squares between them. This left two squares and one hexagon unsewn. I took out all the paper except the ones around the opening, and turned the piece right side out.

I closed up one square and the last hexagon, wrong sides together with tiny whip stitches, removing the papers as I went. That left just one square open. Then I used a paper funnel and filled the pincushion with lentils to give it stability, removed the last paper, and whip stitched the opening closed. I'm sorry there are no photos of the final assembly, at that point it was getting late and I just wanted to finish it! However, you can see the join in the first picture, which is not really what I planned, lol!

The magazine says the project can be completed in an evening, but it took me a solid eight hours. A lot of that time was spent scrounging around for materials, cutting the paper 1/2" squares, etc. The quilting was at most an extra hour. I'm sure a larger one would be easier to manage! Here's a final photo to show the scale:

What a refreshing change for me to have a quick finish!

BFF Progress

I haven't posted in a while, because although I'm still stitching away, there doesn't seem to be much to show. But, I figured I better at least show what there is, if you know what I mean. Month 1 of Best Friends Forever is coming along:

While I'm working on one motif I'll have an idea for a colour or stitch on another motif, so I've been working on them all together. But for a while now all other stitching has come to a halt, because I've become obsessed with preparing the background setting, which is English paper pieced. I've basted 60 x 2" hexagons:

I know the photo looks like just three hexagons, because I didn't want to take everything out of the bags. Trust me, there are 60 there! For Texas Star I don't pre-baste anything, it is all basted and sewn in one step. A number of these units for BFF have to be pre-basted, and I've been surprised at how fun it is! So, in addition to the hexagons, I basted a further 32 x 6 green 2" hexagon kites:

Some of the green 2" hexagon kites have already been joined up with two more yellow kites each to make these triangle units:

I've been piecing Texas Star with Superior's Kimono, 100 wt silk thread, which is completely invisible and perfect for all the different coloured fabrics in that project. But it's a strain to use, and I've been piecing this project, BFF, with regular 50 wt cotton thread instead. There are fewer colours in this project so it is easy to match the thread to the fabric. It is SO much easier to use! I think that's part of the reason I've been doing so much of it lately.

Somehow I managed to precut too many of the green pieces, and not enough of the yellow pieces, so I'll have to scrounge some more yellow from my stash down the road. But I have plenty to keep me busy for a while yet!

Joining a Few Texas Stars

My reading list this morning had three blog posts in a row about hexagons - Metanoia's, Sue's, and Julia's. I thought I better get my act together and show the progress I've made on Texas Star! I've joined a few together to see how they will look:

I did this a few weeks ago, but somehow I put them away without taking a photo. I think this is why:

If you look carefully you can see that the upper left one in the second photo is turned the wrong way. Easy to fix, but it annoyed me at the time!

All the blog posts today made me nostalgic for simple hexagons. If I ever do another paper-pieced project after this one it will be back to hexagons and nothing but hexagons. I have been having a heck of a time with the white diamonds in these stars. This is what happens:

I think this keeps happening because the white fabric is quite a bit thicker than the print. I am going to try shaving off a bit of the diamond paper template before I start next time, and see if that helps.

Anyway, the Texas Star Ticker in the right sidebar is up to number 66 today, which is just past 20% done. Plenty left to do!

Texas Star Ticker

I have been wondering how best to update my progress on Texas Star. I've decided to experiment with keeping the updates in the right sidebar. I'm calling it the Texas Star Ticker. My plan is to post the latest photo and count there, without the need for a full post every time.

If I don't like it, I may try something else instead, but for now, that's the plan!

If it goes well, I may do the same thing with the Hourglasses.

My sewing machine went out for repair today, so unfortunately I probably won't manage to finish any quilts in time for my next guild meeting. But there is plenty of hand stitching to do in the meantime. Happy stitching everyone!

A Few More Texas Stars

I am so excited, because I have two old, old stitching UFOs that are really close to completion. Maybe one more day each. Neither of them was on my to do list for this winter, but, well, you know. I was organizing my stitching box, and I saw how close they both were, so I got distracted. I can't show you those yet, but in the meantime, here's some more Texas Stars:

I have been avoiding picking a favourite fabric in this quilt, because there are so many nice ones, but I think this one above would be it. It reminds me of Hawaii, with the sun and scudding white clouds. This is a very old fabric, I don't remember buying it at all.

These next two I did just buy specifically for this quilt. They are from the Home Front collection from Connecting Threads:

I found a lot of fabric with apples in my stash. Here is another very similar one that I have in a few different colours:

Progress on the quilt suffered quite a bit during my wrist troubles. English paper piecing seems to be particularly hard on my hands and wrists. But, I have found that if I stick to just one star per day I am ok.

My wrist problem, by the way, turned out to actually be a pinched nerve in my shoulder. I have changed the way I stitch so that I sit back and bring the stitching close to my body, keeping my elbows by my sides. So far, this is working really well. Computer work, especially typing, is the only thing that really still bothers me. So I'm sorry if I ever seem terse in the comments!

Hopefully I'll have some finishes to show soon. Happy stitching!

Filler Diamonds for Texas Star

This is pretty much all I have been working on this week. Today I have forced myself to take a break to give my hands a rest! Earlier in the week I cut some more fabric for the project, including these stripes, and the white filler diamonds.

I wanted to start putting in the white diamonds now, so I am not stuck with them all at the end. Now that I have done some of them, I am doubly glad of this plan, because the diamonds are somewhat more challenging.  The points are heavier to baste, and the white fabric is heavier too.  That's why there are holes in my finger that have to heal! But if I just add three diamonds to each star for now, I can arrange them as I like at the end:

I will have to leave a few without the diamonds to finish off the top and right edges.

I have also decided to make the whole quilt bigger. My original plan was to make it about 60" square, but recently I have found myself preferring rectangular quilts, so I am going to bump it up to 60" x 80". With a 4" border, that will require 315 stars. I find that 3 lengthwise strips from a fat quarter give me 4 to 5 stars, so I am going to shoot for about 70 fabrics total. That should be plenty of variety!

I have realized that this is probably not going to be a very blog-friendly project, because I think you can only look at so many stars, but I will try to show a few of the more fun fabrics that I have for this quilt.  The only fussy cutting I am going to do is for the stripes, so it is only here and there that a complete motif shows:

Fortunately, a little bit of mystery about how exactly each star will look keeps it interesting!

Auditioning Backgrounds for the Hexagons

The new design for my hexagons has wider borders, so it is not going to fit onto a fat quarter any more. Yesterday I was auditioning backgrounds. My original plan was to use this fabric from my stash:

When I was redesigning it, though, I kept thinking of a wood grain fabric that Connecting Threads used to have. I liked the idea of the flower vine "climbing up" a wooden wall. But, it's all sold out now, so I found this striped fabric that I hoped would give a similar effect:

And then, lo and behold, after I ordered the stripe, I found a yard of the wood grain fabric in my washing pile! I forgot that I bought it. Here it is:

It is interesting what a great design tool this blog is. When I started to write, I was sure that the stripe would be the winner. I thought the wood grain was too dark and it didn't really "read" as wood. But now I am not so sure! The first one is definitely out, now I am seeing a greenish undertone in that one that leans too far in the dreaded "baby poop" direction. But I think I'm on the fence between the wood grain and the stripe.

What do you all think?

New Plan for the Hexagons

Remember this?

We all had a debate back in June about the half hexagons along the sides. I finally decided to take out the ones in the corners, but leave the rest. They were not easy to remove, which reassures me that the whole thing will be very sturdy!

My plan at the time was to put this panel in the centre of an appliqued border from Lori Smith's book, Fat Quarter Quilting. This is the quilt I had in mind:

Part of the delay, though, has been that while I really like the idea of the vines and birds, I don't love the flowers themselves. This month I started to play around with something that I might like better, and this is what I came up with:

This is just a little sketch on a 4" x 6" notepad. I have found that it is much easier to make a small sketch, and then enlarge it all later. Also, with these notepads the paper is thin enough that you can put a previous sketch underneath and trace the parts you like and revise the rest. I went through three iterations on this with very little fuss. I did the same thing when I made the template for the flowers.

I thought quite a bit about making the flowers in the borders from hexagons too. I figured that using hexagons that were half the size of the ones in the centre panel would be the right scale. Those hexagons are 3/4", so the flower hexagons would be 3/8". I actually like the challenge of using the small pieces, but when I auditioned some hexagons beside the centre panel, it all felt too stiff. It's just too much, and I like the contrast between the symmetrical hexagon centre and the looser, "fluffier" round-petaled flowers better. I don't have a photo of that, unfortunately. You will have to take my word for it!

Tomorrow I'll show you my debate about the background fabric.

New Project - Texas Star

My third new project this week is another English Paper Piecing project, Texas Star:

There are probably dozens of different quilts called "Texas Star."  This one is from the 1940s, and was one of the projects in the first quilting book I ever bought, Scrap Quilts by Judy Martin (1985).

There are three quilts in this book that are on my quilting bucket list, however everything in the book is done from templates, and I never got the hang of them.  I would not be a quilter today if we were still piecing from templates!

I did try, though.  I started this quilt back in the late 80s using samples of home decor fabric, sewn on the machine.  I abandoned the yellow middles almost immediately, but I did manage to make around 200 stars.  I didn't get very far with joining them together though, and it became my second quilt UFO.  I found it all in my big stash clean-out 18 months ago.  Both this one and my first UFO from the late 70s went in the garbage.  Some of you may cringe at the thought, but for me it was very helpful to start fresh(er).

So when I discovered English Paper Piecing, this quilt immediately came to mind.  The original is based on 1.5" diamonds, but I wanted to make it a little smaller, so I am using 1.25" diamonds and 5/8" hexagons and jewels.  I emailed the people at Paper Pieces to ask about a custom order for the 5/8" jewels, and they were able to accomodate me immediately.  It did not even cost any more than a regular stock item, and they are now permanently added to their website.  I just love this company!

I have bought a little fabric for this quilt, but mostly I plan to use up the 1930s reproductions in my stash.  In the book Martin calls the mix of colours and use of black "far from ideal," but to me that is part of the charm, so I am hoping to duplicate the look.

None of my tv projects recently have involved fabric, so it is nice to be back to it again.  Do you think I have enough to do now?

New Project - Meadow

As I mentioned on Monday, once Clara was finished I allowed myself to start a new project. In fact, in the past week I have started three. They are all projects that have been waiting in the wings for quite some time.

"Meadow" is going to be an embroidered quilt. It will be built from these massive 3" (6" across) hexagons:

After all the small English Paper Piecing I've been doing, it is a fun change of pace to work with these big ones. That is three days of basting that you are looking at. I had no idea it would take so long! But now they're going to be packed away while I start on the embroidery.

I am adapting a Susan O'Connor pattern from the Country Bumpkin book Beautiful Embroidered Quilts (2006). The pattern is "For the Love of Butterflies." Susan has embroidered oversized butterflies in Madeira stranded silk on a patchwork of Liberty lawn. There are patterns for 23 butterflies, but I think I will aim for five to ten. Her quilt is huge, mine is destined to be a lap quilt. Plus, her butterflies tend to get lost in all the floral fabrics. My position is that if I am going to spend weeks or months embroidering butterflies, you are darn well going to see them on the finished quilt. Hence all the simple green fabrics.

None of my usual stores stock Madeira stranded silk, so I have defaulted to DMC stranded cotton floss. And now that I've started, I think I will get a better range of colour with the DMC.

I've also tried a new product to transfer the design:

This is Sticky Fabri-Solvy, which comes in sheets that you can run through the printer. I already love it! You can see that this pattern would have been a nightmare to trace, so it was a blessing to be able to photocopy it onto the stabilizer. I was able to fit six butterflies on the page. Then I just cut it out, peeled off the backing, and carefully stuck it to the right side of my well-ironed fabric. I have basted it down just to be safe, because I will be handling the piece a lot. It is a little crisp, but not gummy. It feels like light Pellon. It is very easy to sew through, and provides good support for the dense long and short stitch I'm using.

Speaking of long and short stitch, this is only the second time I've used it in a project. It's going much better than the first time! I'm glad that I decided to start these butterflies before the needlepainting project that I also have in the wings, because it will give me a chance to work out the bumps in my technique.

The Fabri-Solvy also stands up well to unpicking, by the way! So this should keep me busy for quite a while. :)

Hexagon Hiccup

The centre panel of my little wall quilt is finished:

But it's not going to stay this way!

My original plan was to square up this centre panel by sewing straight borders over the wobbly edges, and then applique the borders.  However, there was a problem with that.

As I described earlier, I have been basting and stitching the hexagons in one step and with one length of thread.  This works great and I still love this method.  The catch, though, is that you cannot remove the basting without unravelling the whole thing.  Why would I want to remove the basting?  Because I want to open out the seam allowances to attach the borders.

I could just sew over the folded seam allowances, but I think that will add a lot of bulk, especially along the top and bottom, which will interfere with the applique.

I was explaining my problem to my parents and showed them the work, and they were amazed that I wanted to cover up the nice shapes of the hexagons at the top and bottom.  I realized they were right!  I have already modified the original pattern, so why not keep the hexagons whole and applique the centre panel on top of the borders?

So the half hexagons in the corners are definitely history, and I am also considering removing all the halves along the sides.  Plus, this will be great practice for my Botanic Roses quilt, because I have already decided to applique the centre to the borders on that quilt.

The funny thing is that as soon as I started to fill in all the half hexagons along the sides, something felt wrong.  Now I feel back on track.  But I don't think I would have understood the problem until I went a ways down the wrong path.  Live and learn!

Mail Call

Are you familiar with "haul videos" on YouTube where people share the results of their shopping trips?  It kind of felt like that around here today, so here's my version!

I had all kinds of goodies in the mail today.  From Stitchin' Heaven, the foundation papers and instructions for Judy Niemeyer's Prairie Star:

The people at Stitchin' Heaven are super nice.  I called them right at closing time because I always get the time zone in Texas wrong, but they very kindly stayed and answered all my questions, and then sent this out for me the next day.  I love their newsletter too!  Now that I am such a paper piecing fan I had to try this quilt.  It will be for my dad, but in different colours, which I still have to work out.  It will be a few months before I get started on this.

And for the other kind of paper piecing, the pieces for my Botanic Roses quilt arrived today from Paper Pieces:

I also ordered these huge 3" hexagons (6" across) for yet another project:

The 1/2" hexagons are beside them so you can see the scale.  The customer service from Paper Pieces has also been excellent.  They gave me the heavily discounted sale price on the large hexagons even though I placed the order before the sale started.  I think that is really admirable, and I am planning another order from them soon!

From Nordic Needle I received my perle cottons for Sedona Star:

I had a weird exchange with Nordic Needle this time, which I'm hoping was just an aberration, because they've always been good in the past.  These are Size 8 DMC perle cottons, which were actually finer than I expected.  They will probably be excellent for quilting, but I am considering ordering some of the heavier ones for the seam treatments and embroidery.  I really want something chunky that will show up well on the quilt.

And to top it all off, my issue of Inspirations 74 arrived today:

As you can imagine, I haven't had time to even open it up yet!  But, I think this will all keep me busy for a while!