My quilt guild is having a sew along for Quilt Con, we are making Amy Butler’s Weekender bag, using Elizabeth Hartman’s quilt as you go technique. Elizabeth will then judge our bags, choose a winner and offer a prize! Here are the fabrics I started out with.This has been a group project, we have worked on this at our weekend sew. This was my bag panel, the large section will be covered with a pocket. But then I went home and I felt it just was too messy. So back to the drawing board.I decided to be more structured with my patches. It also just sort of happened one side is green/yellow and the other purple/orange.With front pockets and straps attached. The pattern is the same, the colors are different.
One problem I notices is that the front pockets gape. Maybe when the bag is assembled this isn’t a problem, but I didn’t want to take any chances.I had these magnets from a quilt show. Much thiner than the metal prong kind. They are available online here StudioKat DesignsFor the top/side straps I made one to match each side of the bag.The two side pockets are identical. And now, on to the lining and putting it all together.
A quilt needs a label, something to tell you who made this and when. Even if the quilt is staying with me. I enjoy some hand embroidery, so out come the reference books.I found the Embroiderer’s Handbook at Borders when they were selling everything off before going out of business. One of the best buys I’ve made. I know how to embroider, I follow some good embroidery blogs, but this has become my stitch bible.Gathering the materials. I have started using Frixon pens. The naysays are worried about the image coming back, I’m not. Even if it does, oh well, sometimes convenience and ease is more important that irrational fears.The Frixon pen disappears when heat is applied. Like an iron. See it works! Unintentionally! I thought I’d iron it out before I went on with my embroidery – big mistake! Luckily I hadn’t thrown away my lettering, so I simply had to recopy.In the second book I found this lovely butterfly. What is better in the garden? Or the Not garden.leftover snippets.Now it is really done!
This is it, quilt is finished and named, all it lacks is a label.I love the way the quilting compliments but does not detract, it couldn’t have worked out better. I think I’ll be doing more walking foot quilting. I know it’s going to be a very long time before I make a full quilt out of EPP.Back is just as beautiful, most people would call this the front of a quilt.Hey, this might replace my banner.Yes, I’m proud of this.I’ve gotten very good at glue basting the binding and getting wonderfully perfect mitered corners.Permanent home for the Not your Grandmother’s flower garden.Ahh! Well deserved reward!
I have already submitted this to QuiltCon, which is why I named the quilt. Since it is a modern quilt show, I needed a name that reflects using an old technique, but not an old pattern. I’m very impressed with old Grandmother’s Flower garden quilts, but as antiques, not as something I’d want to make myself.
I think I’m going to do some clothes sewing for a while before I start another quilt.
After months of sewing the hexagons together, I needed to think about the quilting. I knew I wanted some overall quilting that would hold things together well, but would’t overwhelm or underwhelm the quilt.
Lucky for me I had signed up for a great Craftsy class. Creative quilting with your walking foot. Jacquie Gering is an excellent teacher. Most important lesson, it’s a walking foot, not a running foot. Don’t try and sew fast. I made the quilt sandwich and practiced. I’ve had the fabric on the left for about 5 years, Yes, I did use some of it amongst the hexies, but this is just one of those fabrics I don’t know what to do with. Perfect for practice, since my quilt top is very busy. I like the way this is looking.I am using Aurifil thread, no. 40 in a non distcript grey tone. I don’t want the quilting lines to stand out. I want a fluid flowing feeling to the quilt. Something that will soften the hexagon grid. Of course it is easier to see the quilting on the larger patches of the back.Close up of the quilting. The other very nice thing is, since I am not quilting on a solid fabric, my many imperfections are invisible.Wow, this is going so fast! In comparison to the hand sewing. It isn’t easy maneuvering through the machine. Since I am using a walking foot I can only sew forward – no reverse like free motion quilting. I’m about 2/3 done here and I really like what I’m seeing, or not really seeing.The area closest to the camera is unquilted. I like the texture, I also like that the colors and the hexies are still the stars here.Same thing on the back. Sometimes the quilting is meant to be the star. In this case, I need dense quilting but I want it to fade into the background. Many of my hexies had a very scant 1/4″ seam allowance. I need to anchor it all in place. This isn’t a show piece, this will be my cuddle up quilt on the couch.
As I quilt along I’m smelling the starch, not a bad smell at all. Also as I wrangle it through the machine, the stiffness of the starch is abating, but I haven’t had any problem with the glue basting shifting or coming loose! I think I’ve got a winner here in my basting technique!
I’ve been trying to find the best way to baste a quilt – preferably using spray glue. I’ve come to the conclusion that whenever a new product appears on the market (basting glue, frixon pens) the naysayers come out and loudly proclaim that ‘we don’t know how this will affect our quilts in the long run!’. To that I say, I have no idea how long my quilts will be around and I’d really like to use these labor saving tools.
There are so many wonderful tutorials on youtube, time to do my research. First of all, starch both front and back – with real starch, not sizing or replacement product.The starch fills in the spaces between the fibers, sounds good to me. I also, ironed the batting, since there are creases and folds.Here they are, ironed, firm and ready to go.
I’ve tried different methods of spray gluing. My first big mistake, working on the floor! That is just too back-braking, I have a large yard, I have folding tables – why was I making my life difficult?
One method that I have been reading about is using two boards to hold the fabric. When we moved into our house I was a little upset at all the garbage leftover in the garage. But now I discover the perfect 3×1 boards and I’m happy.It’s a little hard to see, but I’ve rolled the top and bottom on the boards, I gradually unroll and spray the batting in in small segments.And it’s done, maybe two hours tops, for the ironing, the rolling and the gluing and no aching back! I’m sold. Now on to the actual quilting.
If you didn’t already know that I am crazy (who hand sews a complete hexagon quilt top??) this will confirm it.
After all that intense hand sewing, it all came to an abrupt end. Now what??? Well of course I need to make the backing and I can’t remember the last time it was one solid piece of fabric. At first I was thinking I’d make up some flowers out of the remaining hexies, but thought better of it, that part was done!
Then I remembered Quilts and More Fall 2014. With my library card I can download and read a number of knitting and quilting magazines. The cover of the fall issue had a scrappy quilt with large hexagons! Perfect, I’ll make a few rows and sandwich them between some larger fabrics.After all that handwork, cutting patches with a rotary cutter and sewing them up on the machine was a breeze.Once started, I just couldn’t stop!So much so that the backing of this quilt is what most normal people would consider to be a lovely quilt top.I did mention I’m crazy didn’t I? Hey, it only took me a few days, not months like the top.
Measuring against Joel’s quilt, it looks like I’m 3/4 of the way done.Adding more black and white.This is how it’s done, one tiny stitch at a time. I think I’m happy with the color distribution.
Jewish men wear a Prayer shawl during services. Traditions vary as to when they start wearing the shawl, some like my sons start at their Bar Mitzvah at 13, others like my son in law – after they are married.
Yochanan asked me to make him the Talit Bag. Yay! Another project!So I gathered my materials, (green of course – his favorite color), picked one of my many paper pieced star patterns and started.Enjoying the added light on the sewing machine bed.The traditional Jewish star is the 6 pointed one. But that is based on the equatorial triangle – or the hexagon and I have enough of that right now. So an eight pointed star it is, I used blue for the stars. Not wanting to be too literal, I did not go with white background, rather with cream.As accurate as I can get, really no one but will will see the millimeter discrepancies (well now that I pointed them out, you will).Tilting the block makes it much more interesting.Hand embroidered name.I actually quilted the star to the background so it won’t shift. An invisible touch. Here I’m adding the zipper.Front view. The bead is from a fimo bracelet I bought a few years ago. I restrung it because it was too big for my little wrist. Never throw anything away, you never know when you’ll want it.Back is as nice as the front.The happy owner of the bag.
Slowly but surely, the quilt grows. I didn’t bring the actual quilt on my trip, it is getting large and unwieldily – even though it’s only about the size of a small baby quilt. What I did do was cut up a lot of paper and fabric on my Accuquilt, bagged them up and sewed quite a few of them on the trip.
Once home I went right back to adding them to the quilt.I am being very mindful of color placement. I know quilters who just throw things together, willy nilly and their quilts look amazing. I am trying to balance to the colors, so they are spread out over the quilt. Since I’m only a third of the way done, if that, I still have a lot of room to work with.
One issue I’m having is the size of the fabric hexies. When cutting by hand, I gave myself a lot of extra seam allowances. Although I cut many more of them on the die cutter, they have exactly 1/4″ seam allowances – which to be honest is very tight.Moving into the yellow and blue you can see the seam allowances are much smaller. This does create a problem, less seam allowance means less stability of each patch.Here is a close-up, in some cases it almost looks like 1/8″. No, I am not going back to cutting by hand. My whip stitches are very close together, so that should hold things in place. Also, I am going to do some kind of overall quilting, by machine! I will not be hand quilting this! The quilting will help hold things in place.I am also changing the paper/card stock I use. The colored card stock is lovely but it is slightly thicker than the mail card I cut up. That tiny increment makes a difference when folding over the fabric. So I am saving all magazine inserts, the ones that used to drive me crazy. As well as envelopes and other junk mail. How’s that for really recycling and reusing!
I’ve been quite addicted lately as you know. Which is why there haven’t been a lot of other projects going up here. Yes my son thinks I’m crazy – YOU ARE SEWING THAT ALL BY HAND?!?!
Sizzix Big shot
Yes, dear I am. But I am trying to figure out how to cut down on the work load. I had heard of all kinds of die cutting machines. I thought this one would cut fabric so I bought it. It’s a fun little tool. Of course this is just the initial expense, then come the actual dies, which aren’t cheap.I bought this set, thinking I can cut paper and fabric in different sizes. Ooops, turns out this machine only cuts and embosses paper. For a while I was cutting the paper templates as well as providing fun for grandchildren.It’s a good workout for them to crank the handle and they love the resulting images, which do end up in the trash. Fun with grandkids is always worth it. Meanwhile, I kept going back and looking at Accuquilt trying to convince myself that I should buy one. I kept saying to myself: after this quilt I will be so over the hexies, really, I don’t need this. Two things, first of all, I may only be a quarter of the way through this. Second of all, they came out with a clamshell die – which opens up a whole new range of possibilities .I bit the bullet and ordered the GO, you can see, it folds up nicely for storage. I had already bought the hexie die in hopes that I could use it with my Big Shot. Remember how VHS wouldn’t play Betamax. (Ok, I am really dating myself here, I probably could come up with a newer example). Well The same is true with die cutting machines. This die is just millimeters too big for the Big Shot. I tried to shave down the edges and realized I am probably wasting my time and might even ruin the die. As Here it is open and ready to use. The Go is much sturdier and heavier than the Big Shot, I did get value for what I paid.I can now cut six layers of fabric at one time, making 24 hexies in one crank. Fabric and paper ready to go.Action! Cutting the dies.
In less than a minute – this is what I have.
I showed this puppy to my son in law, boy did his eyes light up. He had just started a clamshell quilt and was not enjoying the cutting at all. So I promptly ordered the 8″ clamshell die (I’m waiting!!!). It better get here before Saturday, I am going to Israel for a week and promised my SIL that he can borrow this fun tool for just that purpose.
Now I really feel justified in my purchase, knowing how much use it will be getting.
My quilt guild is having a sew along for Quilt Con, we are making Amy Butler’s Weekender bag, using Elizabeth Hartman’s quilt as you go technique. Elizabeth will then judge our bags, choose a winner and offer a prize! Here are the fabrics I started out with.
This has been a group project, we have worked on this at our weekend sew. This was my bag panel, the large section will be covered with a pocket. But then I went home and I felt it just was too messy. So back to the drawing board.
I decided to be more structured with my patches. It also just sort of happened one side is green/yellow and the other purple/orange.
With front pockets and straps attached. The pattern is the same, the colors are different.
One problem I notices is that the front pockets gape. Maybe when the bag is assembled this isn’t a problem, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
I had these magnets from a quilt show. Much thiner than the metal prong kind. They are available online here StudioKat Designs
For the top/side straps I made one to match each side of the bag.
The two side pockets are identical. And now, on to the lining and putting it all together.
