November Quilt Progress Report
Nov. 1st, 2013 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzAnother month flew by and more flowers are done!
I've also been suffering of a Needle Breaking Pox. I exert a little too much pressure on my needle and suddenly it snaps in my fingers. These tiny (3,5 to 4 cm) needles are just a bit too brittle. Luckily I sew with a single thread, which makes changing needles easy.
I might have broken up to four or five needles this month.
Anyway, progress was made! I spent most of my month's quilting efforts on sewing flowers together and finished 29 of these. Each one takes about 20 minutes (with pre-wrapped hexagons and center hex already selected), so you can count the free time this gobbled up.
Click on any image in this post to view a larger size!
I also rummaged around in my basket-of-quilting that's wedged beneath my couch. I found more fabrics. There's two things I want for this quilt:
- No duplicate flowers (but mirror images are allowed)
- As much entropy as possible.
I don't want you to be able to see that this-or-that fabric was added at a later time, because all of a sudden there's a new fabric and it's only in this corner of the quilt. That's also why I have so many paper shapes, I can prepare many flowers before actually having to attach things to the body of the quilt. I can mix them all up as best I can.
And that's why I spent a few hours tracing my honeycomb pattern onto the last few remaining fabrics. Not quite there yet, but above is an impression of what it looks like now. I can cut hexagons off as paper shapes become available again.
In other news, Friend-of-my-Boss'-family Katie and her daughters, who will be joining us in Assen, have prepared gift baskets for each of us. This also created some sort of obligation, and Boss Karin decided a shared burden is more fun. She's gifting each girl a mug and asked us to pick out similar gifts of not too much value. I decided, since I wanted to craft one for myself anyway, I'd make each a quilted clamshell pouch *.
I put on a movie last night and started on the first one, using fabrics from my Brown Hexagon Quilt Swap I thought didn't match the project very well. I bought the pattern at Patch & Stitch and traced the plastic shapes from the package onto tracing plastic ("paternoplaat") so I'd never lose the pattern. For these pouches, I made the eye-shaped pattern pieces 1,5 cm smaller.
This took me between 2 and 2,5 hours to complete. The (cheap HEMA) interfacing is glued onto the tracing plastic eye and cut to size (I used photo glue, after testing a scrap to see if my batting wouldn't dissolve. Cut fabric with 1,5 cm seam allowance and work a running stitch through the seam allowance, crossing over the points. Place batting+plastic inside with batting facing the fabric, gather the running stitch and tie a knot.
Then sew over the plastic, crossing over from side to side, to make sure nothing can move. Cover 3 outside pieces and 3 slightly smaller inside pieces this way. Sew each inside to each outside using a ladder stitch.
Sew the lateral pieces to the bottom piece, leaving the top open, wrong sides togheter. And you're done!
Tip: cut the sharp tip off the tracing plastic at either end of the eye-shape or risk damaging your fabric.
-----
*) Technically, it's not quilted, since you can't stitch through all the layers, but those are details I'd like to gloss over.
I've also been suffering of a Needle Breaking Pox. I exert a little too much pressure on my needle and suddenly it snaps in my fingers. These tiny (3,5 to 4 cm) needles are just a bit too brittle. Luckily I sew with a single thread, which makes changing needles easy.
I might have broken up to four or five needles this month.
Anyway, progress was made! I spent most of my month's quilting efforts on sewing flowers together and finished 29 of these. Each one takes about 20 minutes (with pre-wrapped hexagons and center hex already selected), so you can count the free time this gobbled up.
Click on any image in this post to view a larger size!
I also rummaged around in my basket-of-quilting that's wedged beneath my couch. I found more fabrics. There's two things I want for this quilt:
- No duplicate flowers (but mirror images are allowed)
- As much entropy as possible.
I don't want you to be able to see that this-or-that fabric was added at a later time, because all of a sudden there's a new fabric and it's only in this corner of the quilt. That's also why I have so many paper shapes, I can prepare many flowers before actually having to attach things to the body of the quilt. I can mix them all up as best I can.
And that's why I spent a few hours tracing my honeycomb pattern onto the last few remaining fabrics. Not quite there yet, but above is an impression of what it looks like now. I can cut hexagons off as paper shapes become available again.
In other news, Friend-of-my-Boss'-family Katie and her daughters, who will be joining us in Assen, have prepared gift baskets for each of us. This also created some sort of obligation, and Boss Karin decided a shared burden is more fun. She's gifting each girl a mug and asked us to pick out similar gifts of not too much value. I decided, since I wanted to craft one for myself anyway, I'd make each a quilted clamshell pouch *.
I put on a movie last night and started on the first one, using fabrics from my Brown Hexagon Quilt Swap I thought didn't match the project very well. I bought the pattern at Patch & Stitch and traced the plastic shapes from the package onto tracing plastic ("paternoplaat") so I'd never lose the pattern. For these pouches, I made the eye-shaped pattern pieces 1,5 cm smaller.
This took me between 2 and 2,5 hours to complete. The (cheap HEMA) interfacing is glued onto the tracing plastic eye and cut to size (I used photo glue, after testing a scrap to see if my batting wouldn't dissolve. Cut fabric with 1,5 cm seam allowance and work a running stitch through the seam allowance, crossing over the points. Place batting+plastic inside with batting facing the fabric, gather the running stitch and tie a knot.
Then sew over the plastic, crossing over from side to side, to make sure nothing can move. Cover 3 outside pieces and 3 slightly smaller inside pieces this way. Sew each inside to each outside using a ladder stitch.
Sew the lateral pieces to the bottom piece, leaving the top open, wrong sides togheter. And you're done!
Tip: cut the sharp tip off the tracing plastic at either end of the eye-shape or risk damaging your fabric.
-----
*) Technically, it's not quilted, since you can't stitch through all the layers, but those are details I'd like to gloss over.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 04:42 pm (UTC)You probably mentioned it somewhere, but how large do you want to make the flower quilt?
no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 06:29 pm (UTC)I might already have far too much fabric for that, so I'll see how far my fabrics will make it stretch. The main solid colour that goes around the hex flowers is limited, but perhaps I can work around it.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 07:13 pm (UTC)