Thursday, May 28, 2015

Finished Hexagons #1


I've had my hands full the past few weeks trying to keep up with my crazy kid.  He's crawling all over the place and pulling up on everything.  So while this quilt has been finished for a while now, I'm only just now able to catch my breath and post about it.  Greg and Monica at West Seattle Fabrics did the machine quilting for me.  This is the first time I've ever had a quilt long-armed, and I'm very pleased with the result.  And they finished it in less than a week!



I'm also still stitching away on the other hexagon quilt.  The hand quilting is going much faster than I had anticipated.  So I'm confident that I'll get it finished by my goal of Freddy's birthday in September.


Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Patches of Sunlight


Yellow is a color that I don't see used very often in quilting. It's terribly bright and can easily become overwhelming. (At least to my unaccustomed Seattleite eyes.)  As I've been working on Freddy's hexagon quilt, I've had a love/hate relation with the yellows I included.  When the quilt is bunched up on my lap, I love the pops of color. But when I lay it out, I'm not so sure. Sometimes I can't focus on anything but the yellow.  Then it starts growing on me again.


Eventually I decided just to embrace the yellow.  I found a yellow and white stripe for the backing, and again I went back and forth about using it or finding a more neutral color.  Yesterday, I got the quilt pin-basted and right now I'm in love with the yellow.  The colors of the quilt seem fitting for a spring day in Seattlepartly cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms and patches of sunlight.


I've also wavered on how to quilt this thing.  I though it might be fun to have it long-armed with maybe a custom design. In the end though, I decided that I wanted a more handmade feel, so I'm going to try and make it entirely by hand. For now, I've pin basted my 'quilt sandwich'. I'll probably end up having to thread baste it once I really get going. 


Last night I attempted a few stitches, but with  no thimble, it was both slow and painful.  This quilt will probably get set on the back burner for a week or two while I finish up a couple other projects.