A Question Of Quilts – Well, Two Actually.

Inspired by Cathy’s big, beautiful hexie quilt top in progress she showed us recently, I ferretted around in my workroom and unearthed my box of hexies started a few years ago.  I had bought some thin card pre-cut hexies along with some fabric ones and, filled with the enthusiasm that is always evident at the start of a project, I started making them.

Then I stopped.

Although I did put one ‘flower’ together.

As you can see, this range of fabrics is very retro – it’s Chloe’s Closet for Moda called ’30s Playtime’ but there have been many variations of these so I don’t know which one this was.  They are all along the same lines however.

Then, probably the year after or maybe later, I bought a jelly roll of ’30s Playtime’ which is a different variation but near enough to make no difference.  I haven’t unwrapped it yet but I’m hoping there are more pups and bunnies.

I think I haven’t progressed much with the hexies because I have no clear idea what I’m going to do with them.  I know, almost certainly, I will never have the patience to make a whole quilt with them. So, my question is, do you think I could join the ones I do make into a row – or however many rows I have enough hexies for – levelling that row (or rows) off to make straight lines – then make the rest of the quilt top with the jelly roll strips, inserting the hexie rows wherever they look right?

I also have some larger fabric hexies – just waiting for their paper/card inners – so the rows of hexies would be slightly different sizes.

Any ideas? Please! I have searched Pinterest without much joy as everybody else is obviously far more patient than I am and have mostly made quilts out of hundreds of little hexie flowers or similar.

Now for the second question.

Have you ever used double gauze fabric in quilting?

Double gauze has 2 layers of very thin gauze fabrics fused together, to create a soft, full bodied fabric.   I have some in the perfect colour for backing my F2F blocks which are all in neutral colours with a sort of ‘dirty’ pink – let’s call it ‘vintage’ pink – as a highlight.

When I get around to putting the blocks together, I will be using the ‘quilt as you go’ method for construction which, for the non-quilters amongst you, who probably aren’t reading this anyway, means I will make a wadding sandwich with the top and backing squares and quilt them individually, then join with sashing.

So, as you can see, my hedgehog block is sitting nicely against the colour for display purposes but I just wondered if any of you have any experience of this fabric in quilt making or in any other sewing projects.

Thank you muchly for any ideas, suggestions or general comments.  I know I can count on you.

 

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Playing With Hedgehogs

Firstly, please accept my apologies if I haven’t commented on your blogs for the past week or so but we drove down into Spain/Catalonia for a break while my daughters house/dog/cat sat and, as one daughter doesn’t live here permanently, we’ve also been having some family time and I’ve been keeping off the screen and sewing machine as much as possible.  Mlle. Tialys the Elder is here for another week but I just dropped in quickly with an update on the F2F third block swap organised by Kate.

During the 2016/2017 swap, I discovered the pattern for Elizabeth Hartman’s Fancy Forest quilt and made a couple of blocks featuring her foxes and also two hedgehogs because they were easily made into the correct size for the finished blocks (12 inches) that this block swap calls for simply by adding a border.   It was interesting matching the colours they had chosen for their quilts to the pieces of hedgehog and each one is unique – I can guarantee you won’t see any of these in the wild.

So, in 2016, Susan over in Texas got this one –

and Claire in France got this one

I couldn’t resist revisiting this pattern for this year’s swap and – bearing in mind the participants who have already received one and the fact that not everybody might like a hedgehog in their quilt (although I can’t imagine why not 😉 ) – I made this blue and white one for Sue over in Washington as one of her three blocks for July.

I’d never made one for myself so, not to be left out, I made one in the neutral colour palette I’d selected as my colour choice this time round.

Plus, a paper pieced favourite of mine called ‘Banded Star’ – a pattern you can find free on Craftsy here.

With the receipt of these brilliantly executed (though not brilliantly photographed) blocks from Moira …….

and these lovelies from Nanette………

I now have all my blocks here and ready to be assembled into one big beautiful quilt or, quite possibly, two smaller fabulous throws.  I chose a neutral palette so that I could display them in the living areas of the house more easily so two smaller ones would make sense.

As usual, with sampler quilts, I will probably QAYG (quilt as you go) and might even have a go at hand quilting this time so you probably won’t see the finished article any time soon but it’s time I tried to improve my quilting skills and this will be an ideal project to do so.  Expect minimalism!