Showing posts with label English paper piecing. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 09, 2023

An Exhibition and Hexie Love on Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 443 of the Free Motion Mavericks linking party. I'm still not spending much time in my studio, but it's because I have a companion who would rather spend time outside or in the living room than in my studio 🐶. It's also #100hexies100days2023, so I've been having tons of fun going back to my hexies. 😊

Dog Days of Summer Into Fall

The Out of the Box Fibre Artists group has an exhibition up in one of our local libraries. The Alta Vista branch has a lot of wall space. I'm really looking forward to seeing the exhibit. I'm also thrilled that one of my pieces made the poster!

Out of the box Fibre Arts Exhibit

These are my two pieces. Clover at Dusk was made after a walk with Chevy. It was magical - in the field of clover were several fire flies twinkling around. The background was a fence and vines that were starting to turn red. It's a tiny piece, only 7½" x 8½".

Clover at Dusk

My second piece is Swirling Leaves. You've seen this one a few times because I created a similar one for an auction. I'm going to make a third one this fall as a wedding gift for my daughter's friend.

The original Swirling Leaves

If you're in the area, I hope that you have a chance to see the exhibit. Just check the library's hours.

Dog Days of Summer Into Fall exhibit

Hexie Love!

It's been a while since I played with hexies. As I reviewed my posts, I saw that I made a fun hexie project for Quilting Project this year (see Related links below) and then only posted about my Scrappy Hexie Blanket last November. This was the last time that I added anything to it.

I love the #100hexiesin100days2023 challenge on Instagram and have participated in many of them.

Here are my hexies for week 1. The theme was "This is ME". I included a mono-printed hexie with mostly floral fabrics. That purple flowers hexie is from the curtains of my favourite purple bathroom many moons ago. My son and his fiancé are on holidays in the East Coast of Canada - that blue-green reminds me of the sea 😊and of them.

Week one hexies - "This is ME"

There hexies are from week 2 - Summer Vibes. I'm getting more creative now. This time it includes summer critters as well as blueberries and books. They are all surrounded by a very happy sun 😎.

Summer Vibes displayed with rocks gathered on summer trips

Summer Vibes and my stash of ready-to-go hexies

As I was at it, I created a double flower hexie to add to my Scrappy Hexie Blanket. It started of as this lovely yellow hexie flower with a brown centre.

Playing with hexies outside in the back yard

It then made it to this double flower - poor Poppy acted as a not impressed prop for my picture 😁

Poppy and the double flower

You may have noticed that I messed up the order of the outside hexies. Oh well, I doubt that it will show surrounded by all of the other hexies!

Attached double flower

Here is the week 2 flower added to the rest.

Week 2 flower now part of the gang!

Finally, here is my very crooked Scrappy Hexie Blanket. The double hexie flowers at the top are actually the bottom of the blanket. I have one side finished and will keep extending the other side and making it a little wider. I am then going to figure out how to make it more even, probably by adding some whitish hexies as a kind of border...we'll see.

Scrappy Hexie Blanket so far

This is what the Scrappy Hexie Blanket started as during the #100hexies100days2018

The beginnings of Scrappy Hexie Blanket in 2018

My Companion

When it wasn't raining, I spent a lot of time in the backyard garden with Poppy. I love these photos. If the garden looks like a jungle, it's because it is 😊 The lawn (mostly plants) desperately needs a cut!

Poppy - waiting to see wildlife

Poppy reluctantly posing

Poppy in the sun. She doesn't care
if the lawn is cut!

What I learned

I'm really looking forward to seeing the exhibition. I saw the pieces when I dropped off mine, but couldn't stay because I had a stomach flu and didn't want to share it!
It was really nice to spend time playing with my hexies. It had been almost a year.
I'm going to have to raid my fabric stash to get a little more creative as the challenge goes on.
I've also been spending time stitching on my watercolour pieces. I'm trying to get a little more creative. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to share soon.

Free Motion Mavericks

We didn't have any free motion quilting going on last week but Melva finished another mini, Margo Yang is working on a baby quilt, and Gail made a cool bag for her phone, to use while she walks the dog.

Melva's black and white mini

Margo's design for a baby quilt

Gail's cell phone bag

Please note: there won't be a Free Motion Mavericks post next week, so I'll leave the party running a while longer. Feel free to link up anything you're working on and as often as you want. See you later 😊

It's now your turn!

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Project QUILTING 14.4 – A Novel Project

Yes, I'm back - I can't believe it either, but how could I resist a challenge about books and novels? It just had to happen 😊

A project inspired by books I've read

I have a really, really hard time choosing my favourite books, authors, etc. It all depends on my mood and what's going on in my life at the time. I guess my reading list is like my quilting and art - all over the place 😁 So here's to all of the books that have let me dream, escape, laugh and grow!

Books in my life

My project was inspired by the fabric that I've put aside for last year's Summer Book Challenge with Kate Basti. Instead of making more Tall Tale blocks that wouldn't count as a specific project, I used some of those fabrics to make 2" hexies, English Paper Piecing (EPP) style.

Of the 20 hexies, 4 of them are of books.

Five (5) are beautiful hand-dyed fabrics that represent my love of colour and art and all of the books that I've read on the subject, including novels about artists.

The rest of the hexies, eleven (11) represent the types of books I love. There is a sewing novelty fabric to represent the tons of books that I devour about quilting, as well as the cozy mysteries that I've read.

The purple fish represent Douglas Adams' book - So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

The large bird with the blue flowers is a Nordic fabric, representing the amazing and scary Nordic Noir novels that I enjoy, even if they sometimes spook me!

The nesting doll and the toucan fabric represent the books that I read about other cultures and countries.

The final four hexies of the squirrel, lama, cactus and colourful bird represent the quirky, fun, fantastical books that take me away on adventures.

Here is one of the photos that I took of the fabric pulled for the Summer Book Challenge. You'll recognize a few.

Fabric pulled for the Summer Book Club

Right now I'm reading up on penguins to get ready for my upcoming trip to Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Antarctica.

Reading all about Penguins

Free Motion Quilting

For the FMQ, I stitched around the hexies and then in-the-ditch between the hexies. I then added words that were related to reading and books. They are: books, library, love, reading, knowledge, fiction, history, learn, culture, fantasy, thriller, true, mystery, funny, sad, travel, escape, novel, adventure, poetry and sci-fi.

Books about artists!

What I learned

Books are too important to me to skip this Project Quilting challenge, even if I have other things to work on!
It's been a long time since I did EPP hexies. I still love it!
In 2020, I did a Project Quilting, Challenge 11.2 of Team Colours. Since I'm not a sports fan (or even a team person), I created a book case quilt of my favourite team - Library! See, I really can't resist 😊
Thanks so much to Kim and Trish for these wonderful challenges!

My team colours:
The colours of a library

Related links

Summer Book Club: Coneflowers and books on Free Motion Mavericks, June 30, 2022
Kate Basti on Instagram
The colours of books, January 26, 2020

Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, including Project QUILTING 14.4 – A Novel Project . Let's check out the other Novel related posts! Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Beauties Pageant, Off The Wall Friday, Oh Scrap!, Slow Sunday Stitching, Patchwork & Quilts, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2023, Sew & Tell, TGIFF,

Project details

Books in my life
Made for Project QUILTING 14.4 – A Novel Project
Size: 11¼"x 16½"
Material: commercial and hand-dyed fabrics
Techniques: English Paper Piecing (EPP) and free motion quilting (FMQ)

Monday, November 21, 2022

Hexies and my doggy family

Hi! I thought that I would give you a quick update on my hexies since that's what I've been doing a lot of these days. It's perfect for mindful stitching because there are very few decisions to make. I love all of the slow stitching involved.

More hexies

While I was away with my girlfriend at my brother's cottage, I had time to play with more hexies. Here are some images of what it looked like at the beginning of November.

The eventual Hexie blanket

You can see that I'll have to work at making some of those sides even but I'm sure that I'll think of something interesting when the time comes (that may be putting a lot of pressure on my creativity!) At this time, everything is good and I just keep adding to it😊

A mass of hexies with double flowers on two of the edges

At the top of this picture, you can see some of the hexie flowers that I attached during my time away.

Attached hexie flowers at the top

This weekend I spent most of my time on the first floor with Poppy, my son's beautiful dog. She is a real treat and walking her in the early winter was a lot easier than in the heat of the summer. This was her first walk in snow. She seemed to enjoy it! Some even came into the house with her!

Poppy in the snow

Poppy bringing in the snow 😊

While she was here, I prepared a whole bunch of hexies. I then started attaching some to the eventual Hexie Blanket. The picture below are some of the hexies before I attached them. I am trying to even out those edges.

Working out how to fill in the holes.

The weekend before, I borrowed my brother's two sweethearts. They are photogenic and love having their pictures taken.

Taffy and Twix, happy to have their pictures taken!

I didn't realise that I haven't spoken about my hexie blanket for a long while. I did post a few things on Instagram, so here are a couple of pictures from August 2022. It seems like forever now that my phlox were so beautiful 😊

Double hexie flower in the back yard

A close-up of the double hexie flower.

What I learned

I'm glad that I'm back to working on those hexies. It's really starting to look like it might be a blanket some day.
English Paper Piecing, especially hexies, is a wonderful way of quietly stitching. It's also very meditative.
I'm not too worried about the edges of the piece at this time, although I am making sure that the new hexies on the edges will be relatively straight.
I've enjoyed my time with my doggy family. I get to play with them as much as I can and then give them back. It's a sweet deal!😊
It seems that I haven't really posted about my hexie blanket in a while. It's sometimes hard to keep track of what goes on Instagram and what get's posted on the blog.

Monday, July 25, 2022

Happy hexie flower mug rugs

Hi! It would seem that hexies are back into my life. They are very meditative to prepare and to stitch together (i.e. relatively mindless but enjoyable for a short time).

Happy Purple & Spots

July's colour for the 2022 Table Scraps challenge is purple and the theme is circles, spots and dots. Until last year I had very few fabrics with spots but because of a wonderful gift of scraps, I now have tons.😊

Two English paper pieced, appliquéd, purple & spots mug rugs

As soon as I saw the July theme of spots, I knew that I had the perfect scraps to English paper piece (EPP) some hexies. I also had some gorgeous purple hand-dyed fabrics in my scrap bin. This project was meant to be!

Making the Mug Rug

My first try at stitching the hexies onto the background and batting was a dud since I used free motion quilting (FMQ). It was a mess. I don't often take things apart, but I did this time. I then took my time, pinned down my hexies and very carefully used the walking foot to stitch on the outside of the hexie flower. If you enlarge the picture below you can see puncture marks of very crooked stitch lines around the edges of the flower,

Second attempt at appliquéing the hexie flower

Using a walking foot

Hexie flower stitched down

The next step was to make the mug rug. I had actually planned ahead a little bit and knew that I wanted an envelope or pillowcase type finish. The background piece was twice the length of the mug rug so that it could be used for the background. Below you see that the edges are stitched on two sides of the fabric and the one side is the fold. I left one side open so that I could flip the front out.

Leaving one side open

I learned a couple of lessons during the making of the first mug rug that I was able to apply to the second one (see below).

Stitching the envelope of the second mug rug

Stitched on two sides, ready to be turned inside-out.

Flipped over through the open side

I found that the trickiest part was closing up the open side. Again, I learned a couple of things with the first one that I was able to put into practice on the second.

Over-stitching around the four edges of the background

Two Finished Mug Rugs

First happy hexie flower mug rug

Second happy hexie flower mug rug

Mug rugs in the clover

Mug rugs on a very large Hosta :-)

More Mug Rugs in progress

A third mug rug appliquéd and stitched by hand (WIP)

Last hexie mug rug (WIP)

What I learned

My most important lesson learned is to attach a hexie flower to the background using a walking foot, not FMQ. Lines need to be straight. With all of the layers of fabric, it's a perfect job for the walking foot.
It was very useful to make one mug rug at a time. I was able to use a couple of tricks that I learned from my first try:

It was easier to make the batting a ¼" smaller than the background, and then use the outside of the batting as a guide to stitch around the edges.
When leaving an opening to turn the mug rug over, it's best if the opening is a smaller opening than a full side. It was very easy once right-side out, to stitch up the open portion when a side had been partially stitched on both ends.

You may have noticed that none of my hexie flower mug rugs are centered. I was hoping that I would get better at that as I made more but I seem to have regressed, so my advice is to make it obviously not centered so that it looks like a design feature. 😊