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!

Celtic Spring Progress

Yesterday I showed you where Celtic Spring stood a week ago before I took it out of the frame.  This is what I've managed to achieve with four or five days of steady stitching:

Taking it out of the frame has turned out to be very motivating!  It is SO much easier and more comfortable.  I am fairly strong despite my dodgy back, so I was able to hold the Q Snap frame for about three hours before my left wrist became tired.  Out of the frame I was able to sew for much longer.

It is also much easier to stitch accurately.  With the work in hand, it is easy to come up through the fabric in the right place because your left hand can help guide the needle. As I mentioned yesterday, I am still stab stitching the cross stitches, because my stitches just aren't as neat when I stitch entirely from the front of the work.

When I stitched the aida there was no difference between the stitches worked in hand or on the frame, but on the lightweight linen evenweave there IS a slight difference.  It is harder to get the two strands of floss to lie beside each other rather than overlapping.  If you look closely on the photo you can see the stitches on the skirt below the line are not quite as smooth.

But that is a price I am willing to pay, because everything else about it is better.  It also seems to put less stress on the gold metallic thread, so that actually looks better in the new part of the stitching.

The other challenge with this project is that there are a lot of beads throughout the entire work.  I couldn't imagine how I was going to bead the whole large piece in a frame. Now I don't have to worry about saving the beads to the end, I can alternate between beading and cross stitches to keep everything fresh.

Sometimes you will see someone's cross stitch that has been puckered or distorted because they worked it in hand.  I haven't noticed any problem with that.  The wrinkles in the photo are just from handling the linen.  It may be that because I am stab stitching rather than stitching entirely from the top it is easier to maintain the correct tension.  I am sure there are practiced stitchers who get beautiful results that way, but I am not there yet!  But I can say that I am retiring all my frames for the foreseeable future!