Monday, April 20, 2015

Enthusiasm for Hexagons

After a delightful visit to a not-too-far Quilt Show, I came home with enthusiasm for Hexies!  I have no idea how they will be used.  Right now, I'm enjoying looking at them!     
 
That punch is from Fiskars (under $10.00), an accurate paper punch that I found invaluable for making the papers.  I would NOT do this project without that tool! It doesn't work on plastic, or Mylar, or fabric, only heavy paper, aka as junk mail.  Use the dull paper card stock - shiny is slippery.  My method:  punch a bunch of papers, then with a regular office-type paper punch,  make a hole near the center of each paper (for removal later), take a square chunk of fabric (don't worry about accuracy here - just make it large enough), wrap it around one side at a time, and take 2 stitches from the back.  Then, without cutting your thread, go to the next corner, fold the fabric over the paper edge and take a stitch, folding neatly at each corner, etc.  After fabric is neatly affixed to the paper, trim the extra from the back with a sharp scissors.  MESSY bits everywhere, but you might want to hand quilt these little jewels.  Those stitches stay in -- they do not go thru the paper, only thru the folded fabric.  I used quilting thread.  The used papers are removed with tweezers, or pointed tool, when it was needed to sew on the next hexie and many of them can be used again. 
 
There are many methods, this was mine.  These hexies finish at 1 1/4 inch, even though the punch size is called LARGE.  Note - they are not as difficult as we have been led to believe.  I did 4 rosettes in 2 days of too-much-TV.  These hexies are a perfect take along project.  All the supplies fit in that little tin box to the left of the photo. 
 
My fumble fingers learned the technique quickly.
 
The plastic bag has hundreds of punched papers - I had fun with the punch!     
 


Friday, April 17, 2015

QOV, Done!

Done, done, done, but I'll still wash it before mailing it off.  I LOVE having a place to hang my quilts for photos.

Below - I added a narrow red flange before the binding, for a little big "extra".  Since I had so many curly designs in the center, I used plain straight lines in the border.  Goodness, look what the camera did to my blue fabric border!  The design was a subtle diagonal black line on blue!  8-)))

 
Yeah, I can start on another project! 

Sunday, April 12, 2015

QOV Quilting - Pinwheels and 4-Patches



Machine quilting -  I started with one overall design, and it morphed into another, and then another and then another - no self-discipline!  There are lots of curves, spirals, banana-type fill-ins, and then I got really crazy and started making sun rays erupting from paisleys -- they are my favorite!   All of this quilting is done with the original quilting foot that came with my Janome 6500 MC, a standard DSM.
 
However, a surprise occurred near the end of this project.  On a whim, I again tried to use/learn to use the 3 combination feet for a low shank Janome.  I made up a practice sandwich, and didn't experiment on my nice QOV.  Until today, I have had NO success using these feet, and was totally disgusted with that purchase.  The only thing I've done differently today, is that I used Sewer's Aid on my thread, and tried the feet for at least the 6th time, and voila!!!!  HOOOORRRAYYYY!  I've had to do some eating CROW following this happy surprise.  I MQ'd 2 of the borders on the QOV with no problems at all. Go figure!   
 



The quilting toned down my backing stripes a bit.  I LIKE it and didn't purchase anything more. 

 They look good together.