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.

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 Seattle—partly 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.

Storybook Burp Cloths and Bibs

This weekend I'm attending the baby shower of a friend from college. It's the first shower I've been invited to since becoming a mom, so I wanted to make something special and useful that wouldn't take too much time in the sewing room.  (I'm also playing the piano for a school musical this week, so I've only had a few nap times to spare.)  I decided to go with something that I use everyday, many time times a day: burp cloths.  I had a fat quarter bundle of 'Storybook' lying around. The soft blues and browns would work for a boy or girl, which is perfect, because this baby's going to be a surprise.

I lined the burp cloths with one-sided terry cloth. I've seen it called 'baby terry' or 'French terry'.  It's thick enough to absorb various consistencies of baby fluids, but thin enough to tuck a whole burp cloth (or two) into your pocket. I made the burp cloths about 10-inches by 16-inches—a much more practical size than the long skinny cloths I've seen in stores.

My son, Freddy, is a few months into eating solid foods, and we are going through a couple bibs every day.  So I decided to also make a set of matching bibs, using one of Freddy's bibs to make a pattern.  I traced his bib onto Swedish tracing paper —(which is seriously the best stuff for making or copying patterns, go buy a roll!)—and I added about a 1/4-inch seam. In retrospect, a 1/2-inch seam would have been better. It was difficult to make sure that I had securely closed the hole for turning when I did the top-stitching.

Instead of cutting the terry cloth out with the pattern piece, I just left it as a big rectangle. This saved me the hassle of wrestling with it through the machine.

I sewed 1/4-inch from the edge of the cotton (again, a 1/2-inch seam would have been better), and then trimmed away the terry.

A hammer is a necessary part of every sewing room, don't you know.

The finished gift: 6 burp cloths and 6 bibs. I used 6 fat quarters, ~1.5 yds of terry, and six size 15 snaps.

Freddy agreed to model one for me. :-)

Another Kind of Paper Piecing

I wasn't looking for a crazy new project. Really, I wasn't. But sometimes they just find me. I came across this new pattern today, and I was instantly inspired. I've never done any foundation paper piecing before, so this evening (after watching a short tutorial) I gave it a try.

My verdict: Mostly fun. Kind of messy (lots of little scraps and threads). Quite a bit of going back and forth between cutting, sewing, and pressing. I've still got some things to learn.

I was concerned about removing the paper, but it was really easy. The stitching perforates it, and it tears out without any problem. The hard part for me was joining the two sections of the block. My seams didn't quite meet up. I'm sure there is an easy way, so I'll hunt for another tutorial tomorrow.

Improvisation

A square of batting. A bin of fabric strips. A quarter of an hour. A little imagination. A ton of freedom. Quilt-As-You-Go—for the late night sewer, the tired mom.