WIP: Hexagon Quilt September 2015

I've recently taken to working on my hexagon quilt on the tube in the mornings. It's only a 10 minute journey and I only have a seat about 50% of the time but I've been making some (very slow) progress!

Hexagon quilt: tube ride WIP

On my recent trip to St. Petersburg I finally managed to decide on the overarching design and the quilting. I also want to do some fancy quilting in the white triangles that the design creates and have been playing around with the idea of using my initials in an art deco style font but I might do some sort of geometric design instead.

Hexagon quilt: design sketches

I'm planning on making a king sized quilt so the dimensions of the sketch aren't right but you get the idea. I laid everything out on my queen sized quilt today to see what it looks like in real life:

Hexagon quilt: design layout

Progress so far:
Individual flowers: 2 green, 12 pink
Sections: lots of bits sewn together - the longest continuous bit current has about 8 flowers
Total flowers:37
Loose basted hexagons: 24 white, 115 print

Hexagon quilt: 14 flowers waiting to be connected

I'm going to need a lot more white hexagons! I'm not sure whether to be lazy (and applique the flowers on to a white background) or crazy (and piece the white sections from individual hexagons). Being generally crazy, I'm leaning towards option 2. What do you think?

I'm flying to Germany for a wedding next week so hopefully I'll get a few more done on the aeroplane.

Love,
Me x 

P.S. This week I'm linking up to with Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count. There are some gorgeous projects going on over there - you should check them out some time!
Check out WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced as well. Seeing what everyone else is working on really motivates me to do more sewing - even if it's just some hexagons on the tube.

WIP: Hexagon Quilt February 2014

I've been on holiday for the past two weeks and, annoyingly, was rather ill for some of it. This did, however, in combination with rather a lot of time spent in aeroplanes, give me a fair bit of time to spend on the hexagon quilt.

Here is February's progress report:

Progress: February 2014

Flowers: 6 pink flowers, 1 partial pink flower

Sections: two sections of 3 pink flowers each

Loose basted hexagons: 7 white, 41 print

Very pleased with myself, especially given that I'm currently still in the US and have a 6 hour flight back to London tomorrow and a trip to Germany coming up next week. Yay for sewing on the plane!

Love,

Me x

Completed: hexagon travel sewing kit

Finished hexagon travel sewing kit - pattern by thezenofmaking

I finished my hexagon travel sewing kit today. Yay! I used this wonderful tutorial from Haley at thezenofmaking. It was really very quick to make- Haley's tutorial is really straightforward, well illustrated, and clearly described. Also, I liked the fact that there was a significant bit of hand sewing involved because I like hand sewing. It is small enough to fit in most of my handbags, while also fitting my YLI thread spools and enough hexagon sewing bits and bobs to carry around and keep me occupied. My next plan is to make some of Haley's altoid tin sewing kits- I have a lot of altoids to get through first though!

Sewing kit with altoid tins and hexagons

The other great thing about this bag is that I didn't have to buy anything except a magnetic handbag snap for it. Making things that don't require spending money on new materials always makes me feel like I'm winning. The hexagon flowers are made from my favourite Liberty of London tana lawn: Lodden in green. This fabric is simply a joy to work with. I could go on and on about the amazing properties of Liberty's tana lawns.

The main green solid is from Kaufmann I think and it's pretty close to my favourite shade of green. The lining fabric is a blue and white polka dot which is, in my opinion, the perfect blue. Now, if only I could remember where I got it from (Kaufmann perhaps?). It's been in my stash since this quilt and just waiting for the perfect little project as there was only a tiny bit of it left. Now there are only a few scraps left but I can't bear to throw them away. I have so many fabrics that I wish I had bought more of!

                      Supplies                            

WIP bag goes travelling (on the train)

I embroidered my initials on the centre hexagons with some embroidery floss that I inherited from my great grandmother (yes, my initials are ET). Using her things always makes projects more special and, generally, I only ever use them on things that I make for myself or my mother. I like remembering my grandmother and great-grandmother by wearing their jewellery and using their crafty things. I'm currently debating whether to attach this doily which my great-grandmother crocheted to the back of the bag, which is currently just plain green. Hmmm.... Choices, choices. Oh, I also embroidered a needle and thread on the inside hexagon flower.

Embroidered hexagon flowers. Bottom right now has a needle & thread on it.

I'm so pleased to have replaced my ubiquitous hexagon transportation system, a plastic zip lock bag, with something so much better thanks to the lovely zenofmaking. Now back to the monster hexagon quilt and the five other projects that I've started but not yet finished!

Old and new hexagon paper piecing travel solutions

Love, me x

WIP: Hexagon Quilt

As the whole point of this blog is to document my sewing projects, here is one of my current works in progress.

The Hexagon Quilt

August 13th 2013
19 flowers finished and some sections started.

Started: 3rd June 2013. Here are my first two flowers:

The first two flowers - 3rd June 2013

Finished: Who knows!?! A long, long time from now! It's a great portable project though. As it turns out, the Cambridge to King's Cross train = one finished flower.

Size: Aiming for Queen sized, or whatever size my bed is when I finally finish the monster.

Quilt top: My hexagon templates are courtesy of the wonderful Geta. The flowers are "Painted Mums" from Heather Bailey's Freshcut range, which I adore. I have no idea whether I have enough of it to finish the quilt. Probably not. I should go do some maths. The centres are a green solid which used to be part of an IKEA pillow case, a yellow polka dot which I bought for this quilt back in 2008 and a peachy pink dot from my stash.

Backing: Currently I'm thinking solid white cotton. This may change, obviously.

Binding: I LOVE this self binding method that badskirt introduced me to but I don't know if I have the patience for it. I could also bind it with the Freshcut peachypink dotted paisley. Hmmm... perhaps I should buy some more before it sells out.

Batting: I recently made a quilt with Hobbs Heirloom wool batting which was gorgeous and so easy to quilt. I'm waiting to see how the quilt holds up when it's washed a couple of times as it's the first time I've used wool batting.

Quilting: I have some gorgeous YLI hand quilting thread in yellow, green, and peachy pink. I'm in love. I've also been using YLI quilting thread to sew together my hexagons and it's a dream to work with! I like that it's a little stronger than "normal" hand sewing thread. Also, I was given a box including some lovely browns as a gift and I don't plan on quilting anything in brown anytime soon so they're great for sewing my hexagons together!

YLI 100% cotton hand quilting thread
yellow, spring green, and peach

Progress:
13th August 2013: 19 flowers
31st December 2013: 28 flowers
20th January 2014: 30 flowers

I love making lists. Here's my list of progress for this quilt:
finished small flowers:15
finished partial large flowers: 4
Finished sections: 3 pink, 3 green + 5 yellow
basted & ironed hexagons in boxes: 131 flowered, 43 white, 0 yellow, 10 green, 9 pink

My original plan was to try to make four small flowers per month, which means that I'm slightly behind but not by much. Weee!  Also, I made loads of basted hexagons in preparation, so that counts, right? I store my basted, ironed hexagons in these handy macaron boxes from Pierre Hermé, which are just the right size.

Basted hexagons in macaron pastry boxes

While this is a great storage solution, carrying my hexagon quilt project around with me currently involves a rather unsightly zip-lock freezer bag. I really want to make one of these absolutely genius travel kits. It's one of the many sewing projects on my "to do before the new job starts" list.

Love, me xx