Marquise #8: just a few more

It’s nearly there.

I have all the strips  joined apart from the one down the centre, and I’ve started to make the infills around the edge which will make it infinitely easier to bind.

I think it’s going to be the outer hexies stitched onto a plain, fairly narrow dark bluue border, and then bound in the same dark blue. I want to let the diamonds sparkle, rather than distract from them with something too ‘exciting’. (Sorry about the rather gloomy photo, it’s very overcast today and the daylight I prefer for photographing this quilt is very subdued.)

Now it’s a question of whether I have enough scraps of the right size in the right colour palette.

We shall see.

Marquise #7: on the downhill

This bit’s tedious…

I’m in the middle of assembling the main body of the quilt, and it’s extremely repetitive and, dare I say, boring? This has always been my least favourite part of hexie quilts; actual hand quilting is huge fun by comparison. I have the first 6 columns from the left fully assembled, and two more sets of two columns also done. You can see the white gap where the next set will start. Speaking of which, I got my quilting thread. It’s not DMC, which I can’t get in the right colour unless I buy a dozen, which I don’t need. It’s Wonderfil, and I love the fresh bright green.

Sorry about the long asbsence, I’ve been a bit unwell with the vertigo and back pain lately, and haven’t felt up to crashing on with hand stitching. It seems to make things a little worse, which is strange until you realise that if your balance organs are damaged, you have to rely on your eyes to orient you in the world. Thousands of tiny stitches is tiring on the eyes. On the other hand, the process is also somewhat addictive, so I guess it’s finding a balance. Probably a life lesson I should have learned before now…

Time to give my eyes a rest, not to mention my fingers!

 

 

Marquise #6: not far to go.

Lots of blue trellis made.

About 120 blue hexies still needed to complete the current pattern. I’m going to need more after that to ‘straighten’ the edges a bit, as I’ve decided to appliqué the outer hexie edge to a straight border.

I’ve begun joining more of it all up. The first four columns are complete, and I’ve started the fifth. It is extremely tendious, but has to be done or it’s nothing but pieces.

I’ve also decided to be easy on myself. Quilting will be straight diagonal lines, intersecting primarily through the trellis, but probably also through the centres of the diamonds. Thread will be something colourful, I think… Bright green, maybe?

What do you think? Green or orange or pink or turquoise…?

Marquise #5: Let the trellis begin

The first two columns you see here are fully stitched.

Just now, it’s a series of  1) make a load of dark blue hexies for the trellis strips; 2) stitch trellis around diamonds; and 3) stitch the upright columns together. 5 out of 8 columns have their trellis borders now. Don’t you love how the dark blue makes the diamonds really sparkle, a bit like the real think lying on a black velvet pad at the jeweller’s?

The quilt’s beginning to ask questions about what happens at the edges – top, bottom and sides – and I’m thinking about it. I dearly love a ziggy zaggy border, but it’s sooooo much work because I have to face the edge rather than simply whack a binding on it, and in addition to all the careful whipstitching of the edge that’s needed, I’ll need to make a whole load of facing hexies to go around the edges. There’s a certain amount of work also involved in hemstitching hexies onto a plain border. The easiest is to chop the edges straight, but I’ve never knowingly cut through a hexie, and I’m not about to start now. So we shall wait and see how strong the force is still in this one once I reach that point.

In case you’re struggling to visualise, here’s a zigzag border, and here’s a straight border. Let me know what you think. I actually wouldn’t mind a straight plain dark blue border to match the trellis, even if it would play Old Harry with my eyes to stitch the hexies down…

And onwards with the blue hexies.

Marquise #3: Like Topsy

… she just growed!

Marquise has gone from 39 diamonds to 55.

The photography’s still crappy, but production is tootin’ along. You’ll see that a few new fabrics and colours have introduced themselves to make it all a bit less curated-looking. I just cannot limit my colour palette, despite trying. I confess it as a character defect in a quilter. To me, it looked a bit bland and blah and matchy-matchy before I added the new colours, and I’ll be unable to resist adding blue borders soon. That’ll definitely give it punch.

In the meantime, I have a stack 3″ tall of squares waiting to be turned into hexies and then diamonds. Once I’ve worked my way through that lot, I need to step back, assess, rearrange, squint and decide how big Marquise is going to be. I reckon I’m at least one third or possibly even halfway through the diamond-making process.

Meanwhile, I’m putting off making a collar and lead, unpicking a top, cutting two patterns and a couple of other things.

But this is much more funnerer.

And it has a name

That holiday handwork? Those hexies that just multiplied?

Yeah, they’re becoming diamonds, because I haven’t done a quilt like that yet. And because of the shape, the quilt’s going to be called Marquise, after the cut that’s sort of the same shape. I’ve settled on dark inky blue to border each ‘jewel’.

As you can see, I’m fast approaching the ‘oh bother, I need to make more hexies’ point. There are 32 diamonds made up and 94 hexies left over. Lest you think that’s plenty, that’ll make only maybe another ten diamonds. I do have a load of dark blue hexies made up to start the bordering process, so I might do a bit of that. But before I start, I want to work out how I’m going to arrange the diamonds into the most pleasing layout. There are several options, so I’m going to lay each one out and see which I prefer.

And then I need to go and press and cut up more scraps. O joy.

Here we go again…

It was a holiday, so of course my hands needed work.

There was only one solution. Some leftover jelly roll strips, some recycled hexie papers, a needle, thimble, thread and scissors. Yes, it’s the start of yet another hexie piece. I’m trying to keep the colours to a fairly restricted pale, fresh palette, but that too keeps growing. It’s all scrappy, even especially the hexie papers, some of which have done service at least 5 or 6 times and are getting battered.

So, at the beginning of the trip I had this. Excuse the ‘noisy’ background, it’s my bunk quilt.

And by the end, I had this. I still have to decide how this is going to be laid out. I’ve never done a diamond format before, and I think it might be fun. And what goes around the outside of each shape is still a mystery too. Maybe navy?

I’ve added a few more since we got back, but I’ll hold off showing more till I decide how to lay them out.

Like you, I’ll just wait and see.

Delft, done

I was going to take it on holiday to work on.

But… it’s hot and I didn’t want to sit under it while I stitched any longer than absolutely necessary. And I made good progress on the hand quilting once I got more thread. And the binding went on very easily, and I stitched it down while I listed to a podcast. So, here we are.

Higgins insisted on photobombing. He thought perhaps the Husband had a stray sausage or two in his pocket…  Perfect soft evening light, true colours, no glare and an almost invisible black dog.

And a label, of course. I made it a year ago, and left the area for dates empty because it was just one of those ‘whenever’ quilts.

So that leaves the interesting question of what I’ll be working on while I’m away. You’ll have to wait and see. I am SO looking forward to this holiday. Even rain cannot dampen my enthusiasm, because it is so sorely needed where we’re going. Still a few things to do, but we’re essentially ready.

We launch at sparrowfart, me hearties.

Delft #7: thinking through the border

So, I put down my secret project for a couple of hours.

It was time to get cracking on the border for Delft. I’ve been putting it off because I knew that the fabric I’d bought wasn’t quite long enough now that I’d added an extra row to the bottom of the hexie panel. I knew I’d work something out, but it was going to take a bit of consideration

Sorry about the gloomy lighting, it’s been a very dark and overcast day

So, here’s the result. The border pieces are short by 8 inches each. I had enough left over to improvise cornerstones, but not the length I needed to make each side long enough to mitre the corners elegantly. Cornerstones it was, then. The borders are 10 inches wide. This meant that there would be a Y seam running diagonally up to the cornerstone. The fabric is, as you can see, very directional, so I needed a solution that would address this. So I cut half square triangles and alternated the print direction. I think it works. I’d already made the 4 pink hexie flowers thinking I might use them to disguise any, um, messy bits unsuccessful improvisation. I’m not sure about them. Do you think they look like afterthoughts, or like I’m trying to hide something?

I need to be happy with the solution before I start work, as the next stage is to press all the edges super hard, pull out all the papers and then baste the edges to the borders. Once they’re secured, I’ll make the mitre that forms the bottom of the Y seam and then insert the cornerstones. If I do the mitres first, it will inevitably mean that something doesn’t fit, there will be gaping or puckering and it will be nasty. Far better to attach the edges first and then fold away the mitre.

So that’s the plan. Probably. For now, anyway.

Anemone, finally finished

Can you believe how long this has taken?

Not the hand quilting, which was long enough, but the whole thing. I started this lovely six years ago! And looking at it now, fully completed, I wonder why I was bonkers enough to put it on the back burner. Still, the hiatus hasn’t dimmed my enthusiasm for it. I still love it soooo much! I really like faced hexie quilts, because it retains the distinctive shape of the outer edge, and although it’s meticulous, laborious work to create and apply the back facing, I feel it’s really worth the effort when you look at the front.

I don’t have my handy quilt holder-upper (aka the Husband) today, so I have draped it tastefully (I hope) over a sofa. Possibly you can’t see every single hexie, but you get the idea.

Weird that the pink quilting thread looks black, but there you go.

And here’s a close up.

And the label, which I have concealed behind a hexie of appropriate colour on the back of the quilt, stitched in so that you can flip it open just enough to read it. I’m beginning to find labels a bit intrusive to look at unless they carry an important message (as in the DfG or Ovarian Cancer quilts), so I think I’ll keep this ‘hidden message’ option going forward.

And so we say farewell to Anemone. Next cab off the rank should be Delft, but I suspect I’ll finish assembling the front, remove most of the papers and then put it away for a bit. My fingers need a break from hand stitching for a good long time. And there’s another hat cut out and waiting for me, not to mention other quilt projects.

You’ll just have to wait and see what I pick next!