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 #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.

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.

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!

Anemone: row 24 quilted

I decided it was time.

I’d been neglecting Anemone in favour of feverishly stitching away at Delft. I’ve reached the point with Delft that it can just sit for a bit until I’m ready to piece large sections together, never my favourite part. Anemone has been quietly waiting on my cutting table (and yes, taking up all the space and preventing me starting yet another new project). Time to start hand quilting again.

So that’s what I did. And now I’m up to row 24 and three more are marked up ready to go. It’s actually quite soothing. I can listen to podcasts or YouTube videos while I stitch along the rows of scallop shapes. Three rows at a time is about enough before the fingers get too sore and I have to take a bit of a break before starting again.

It’s still hexies, but at least I’m not sewing them together any more…

20% plus a fistful more

The 20% is Anemone. 

The fistful more is the yet to be named blue hexie quilt. I have finally applied myself to naming it, as calling it the ‘yet to be named…’ is both embarrassing and clunky. I have decided to call it Delft. I am half Dutch, so the beautiful blue and white pottery by that name which I love so much is part of my cultural heritage. Also, the city is the birthplace of one of my favourite painters, Jan Vermeer (think Girl with a Pearl Earring) and is a beautiful place in itself.

There is progress on both. Anemone has now reached the stage of being 20% quilted. It’s going well. I find it soothing, and easy to find enough time in a day to do a row or two (or maybe three). I’ve finally located my thread conditioner (the little blue box), so now it’s even easier, since it tangles even less than it did before. The relative firmness and non-tanglyness of hand quilting thread is one of the great things of hand quilting for me, especially as I am a lazy quilter and use a long thread. Life is too short for constant knot-burying. Getting this quilt done is my priority just now, as I can’t use my cutting table for other things while I’m working on it.

Starting Row 15

And Delft? I have made a bunch more flowers, some with scraps and some with my new yardage. it’s clear to me I’m going to need a LOT more dark blue fabric; those hexie flowers munch it up fast, whilst the paler separator hexies are comparative fewer. I should have bought twice as much dark and half as much light!

A fistful more hexies

Oh dear. I have to go fabric shopping….

Always with the blues

It’s a bit of a problem, sometimes.

I can’t resist dark blues. And now that I’ve started these hexies, I see lovely fabrics everywhere.

So… I had a fat quarter of a dark blue and cream tiny floral stripe pattern. I say had; it’s a pile of hexies now. But if this was going to turn into anything useful, I was going to need more. So I paid a visit to Cairns Creative and bought half a metre of a really nice dark blue tiny print, and also a dark blue and white Aboriginal meander pattern which will work with the blue and white lawn print I’m  using for the intermediate hexies in the layout. You’ll see what I’m talking about when I start to lay things out.

And of course while I was there I had a poke through their remnants basket and found this beauty!

Eden, by Sally Kelly

It’s the same fabric as some of the scraps I got when I visited Amitié Textiles in Victoria. The scraps I plan on using to make a patchwork coat. I loved the fabric so much I recognised a small corner of it halfway down the basket, and dived for it. It’s so lovely I can almost, almost not bear to cut into it. I may have to turn it into a large panel on the back of the coat, say, so that I don’t have to cut it too much.

But that’s for the future. First, more hexies, and sadly, the end of the holiday is upon us. Two more nights away, and then it’ll be time to start unpacking, cleaning and doing laundry.

Welllll, when you put it like that, I really deserve some lovely fabric, don’t you think?

ScrapHappy February

Welcome once again to ScrapHappy Day!

It’s the day my friend Gun in Sweden and I host ScrapHappy, a day for showing something made from scraps.

And here it is, the third and final piece of the prize trio I’ve made from the Days for Girls scraps. You’ve seen the completed cushion cover (third prize), and more recently the completed Days Gone By hexie quilt (first prize), but I’ve finally got the table runner finished as well, the second prize. This piece uses up the very last flower, the absolutely last hexagon made for the fundraiser. Metres and yards of perfectly usable and useful fabric saved from landfill.

The backing for this table runner is made from offcuts of the backing I made for the quilt, itself made from leftovers in my stash. The binding is made from the spotted spacer fabric I used for my Anemone quilt. It’s truly scrappy. Even the batting is offcuts.

Raffle tickets are now printed and ready to go. If you’re interested in buying one, go to the Days for Girls Mackay FaceBook page to see how. Just AU$5 a ticket for a chance to win the quilt, table runner or cushion cover, or 3 tickets for AU$10. However, at present, payment options are only available to Australian residents.

I know that several of you have expressed interest in buying tickets. Anyone not in Australia who’d like a chance to win, please get in touch with me/leave a comment so we can discuss options. For any of my readers outside Australia, we will have to ask you to pay for postage and packing if you win any of the prizes; for readers within Australia I will donate postage to a destination further than 50km outside the Mackay area. The draw is on 20th March.

And now, I’m ready for some squares. Or rectangles. Or triangles. Anything other than, you know, hexies… Onwards. I have lots of ideas for more fundraiser items, and bags and bags of scraps await!

ScrapHappy is open to anyone using up scraps of anything – no new materials. It can be a quilt block, pincushion, bag or hat, socks or a sculpture. Anything made of genuine scraps is eligible. If your scrap collection is out of control and you’d like to turn them into something beautiful or useful instead of leaving them to collect dust in the cupboard, why not join us on the 15th of each month? Either email me at the address on my Contact Me page, or leave a comment below. You can also contact Gun via her blog to join. We welcome new members. You don’t have to worry about making a long term commitment or even join in every month, just let either of us know a day or so in advance if you’re new and you’ll have something to show, so we can add your link. Regular contributors will receive an email reminder three days before the event.

Here are the links for everyone who joins ScrapHappy from time to time (they may not post every time, but their blogs are still worth looking at). This month, we have two new participants: say hello to Dawn 2 (sorry, I don’t know your surname initial!) and Noreen.

Kate (me!), Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Kerry, Claire, Jean, Jon, Hayley, Dawn,
Gwen, Bekki, Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin,
Vera, Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2 and Noreen

Please note As I have not heard from anyone who has not posted for a year but who still wants to stay on the list, I have now removed those names. If you’d like to be reinstated, let me know, but it would be good to see you posting again!

See you next time for more scrappy loveliness.

 

 

 

 

and Dawn