A Prairie Home Quilts

So, where have you been, I hear you all asking?  [Imagining to myself there’s at least one someone out there still listening after all this time… ] Welp, doing some house sitting, of course, and on a spiritual journey of sorts.  Yes, again.  Involving dragons again, too.  But, you know, I came away with a deeper understanding of the Hymn of the Soul and the meaning of the pearl.  Oh and the great Hydra was involved.  It was worth every minute of the journey.  Hehehe.  I will spare you the details of my spiritual epiphanies, though.  Really.  I’m sure you are more interested in the quilting I’ve been doing.  Wait, how could I forget?  There was a magical wedding and children visiting from far away lands happening in the middle of all this, too!

And I should probably fess up that I’ve been doing some writing also.  November is National Novel Writing Month, did you know that?  According to the Office of Light and Letters it is.  [Love their slogan:  We believe in ambitious acts of the imagination.]  The challenge is to write 50K words in 30 days.  I spent part of October preparing to write and I’ve written every day in November [obviously nothing for the blog!].  I’m at just under 39K as of this morning and hoping to hit 40K by tonight.  No one but me will ever read the thing, but it’s been another fun part of the journey to slay the great Hydra and let my imagination soar.

Okay, okay, on with the quilting…

I’ve been working on my .75″ hexagon project, Field of Flowers.  It was stalled.  I didn’t have all the flowers prepped.  I decided to go ahead and do that with Inklingo.  I can’t remember now how many flowers I needed but I printed and cut enough sets of flowers and centers to have 512 flowers when they’re all stitched. [I need 502.]  Then I went ahead and printed the corners and edges in the green fabric I’d purchased eons ago.

I started this project working from the middle out and then decided it would be so much easier to start from a corner as I was always getting the middle portion twisted around.  I have more than half the flowers done.  I feel like I’m making a huge dent in this project.

New starting point — bottom, left corner

Some finished flowers.

The box with the remaining flower sets.

And more of the wedding, just because…

Oldest daughter, Jessica with groom’s younger brother

Youngest daughter, Rachelle with groom’s older brother

Michelle and Jared McCarty

Daughters again…

Oldest son, Nathan and his lovely wife, Koren.

I fell behind on my goal of 10 hexagon flowers a week for Field of Flowers but am now caught up to where I should be.  I’ll have to make another goal for sewing so many flowers together every week or resign myself to the fact that this top will take more than a year to complete. I have 150 flowers done although only about 25 are sewn together.

Don’t they look fun?  Ludo thought so too!

I’m Not Martha is a quilt that I challenged myself to put together for as little money as possible.  I managed to pull together enough fabrics for the 42 full hexagon diamonds and 8 half diamonds from my meager stash & swap & purchase the rest on sale for about $37.  I’ll make the backing from some of the larger pieces I have in my stash.

Originally I wanted to coordinate the sets so that I could have 7 of each of 6 different colors, but when you’re “making do with what you’ve got,” things don’t always work out like you hoped.  There wasn’t any way to put the fabrics together without mixing & matching colors.  So some diamonds are made with 2 colors — blue & yellow, purple & pink, etc.  And some of the fabrics aren’t as perfectly coordinated as I’d like either, but that’s also part of the “making do” thing.  You actually find yourself being more creative.  I needed 50 sets of fabrics so I mixed & matched as best I could.  (I keep telling myself that it will be part of its charm.)

I fell behind in February in my goal of making one diamond a week but got caught up in March to where I should be.  I managed to stay current in April.  I now have 15 of the 42 full size diamonds done.  That’s 375- 1.25″ hexagons!

This is the pattern I laid out in EQ5 after joining the Great Hexagon Quilt Along. Some of the quilters there are doing a diamond hexagon mosaic quilt based on this antique one. [Click on the picture there to see the larger view of this quilt!] The pattern name for this mosaic hexagon quilt is Martha Washington’s Flower Garden according The Quilt Index.

I like to name my projects so I’ve decided to name this one I’m Not Martha. The most obvious reason is that — I’m no Martha Stewart. [shocking, I know.]  My children can attest to that. My mother would probably chime in there too.  Do my kids care that I’m not more like Martha? Nah.  Do I want to be more like Martha?  Nope.  [There is the whole biblical Mary vs. Martha analogy working into the naming of the quilt, but I'll save that for another time. . .]

In the spirit of not being like Martha Stewart and also as a reminder for me of times that we currently find ourselves living in, I decided to see how frugally I could make this quilt.  I want it to have an antique look  as a  reminder or link to the past also [definitely not as 1930-ish looking as the EQ5 drawing!] so I’m trying to go with as many vintage-looking and reproduction fabrics as I can.  And since my Field of Flowers hexagon quilt is .75″ hexagons and pretty much from scraps, I decided to make this one with 1.25″ hexagons which requires bigger pieces of fabric.  There will be no looking in the scrap bins for suitable fabrics for this one.  I’m sure for some of you this wouldn’t be much of a challenge because you could just go shop your stash, but my frugal ways and being a single parent of 4 has not allowed for large stash building.  What will probably trip me up is needing a certain color of fabric and not having the money at the moment to be able buy any, but I will persevere.  *smile*

The challenge then for this quilt is to spend as little money as possible, give it an antique look, have it be a controlled scrappy quilt by making 7 diamonds each of color — red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and purple, use gray around all the diamonds, use black fabric for the center of each diamond, use 1 red fabric as a connector in the center of each of the 6 diamonds and find a special fabric to use as the flower in the very center.  I have my work cut out for me!

I have pulled the fabrics from my meager [and I do mean, m-e-a-g-e-r] stash that will be suitable to use and started printing hexagons for the diamonds.  I will definitely need to purchase or swap for fabrics to coordinate with what I have.  I plan to purchase only fabric that is on sale though.  I have yardage of a gray muslin-like fabric that I bought several years ago to use on my original GFG quilt design that I’m not using anymore because that design morphed into  my Field of Flowers quilt.  I’ve got that fabric cut and have printed some of the 550 hexagons that go around all the diamonds.  Oh, and did I mention that I want to do 1 hexagon diamond a week with the goal to have this top together a year from now??  So far I’ve spent $12.  I purchased 6 FQs for $1 each and spent $6 on 3 FQs for $1 each plus shipping.  I have 1 yellow diamond hexagon done.

I decided on this quilt [and on I'm Not Martha] to challenge myself to complete so many sets of flowers per week in hopes of having this quilt top together a year from now.  Hand piecing 10 flowers a week seems reasonable.  *smile*

The first ten flowers sewn together.

This is the reverse side showing the pressed seams. (My apologies for the blurry photos!)

These are pieced using a running stitch so the seams need to be pressed to lay flat.  I’m pressing as I go so that I don’t end up with an overwhelming ironing job at the end.

I’m house sitting for a week starting next weekend and I plan to do a bit of sewing while I’m there.  I won’t have computer access so I’m just going to enjoy my time working on quilting projects — sort of like a quilting retreat only I’ll be the only one there.  LOL   I’ve got the next 2 sets of 10 flowers for this quilt ready to be pieced.  I need to get a few more hexagons cut and marked for “my retreat.”

A hexagon update. . .

Here’s what I was experimenting with:  Ironing a freezer paper template of the hexagon shape without seam allowances to my 2″ squares, roughly trimming them, and then piecing them together using a running stitch.  As I suspected, the freezer paper got in the way while I was piecing and didn’t stay on very well; but what I didn’t expect was discovering how much having your shapes match up at the cut edges helps when you are hand piecing.  That necessitated a change of plans — otherwise known as — more experimenting.

Here’s what I’m doing now and it seems to be working out:  (Remember that I am trying to avoid basting my 2″ squares to paper templates.)  I’m ironing on a freezer paper template with seam allowances to my 2″ squares.  I’ve printed the templates right on to the freezer paper using Inklingo.  So easy now to trim them all up to the perfect size!  Then I’m ironing on a freezer paper template that doesn’t have the seam allowances and tracing around it with either a fine point mechanical pencil or colored chalk pencil if the fabric is too dark to see the pencil line.  So easy now to hand piece with a running stitch!

I know it probably sounds like more trouble than it’s worth but I’m doing it assembly line fashion and it hardly seems a bother at all.  Best of all, I’m getting more hexagon flowers sewn together quicker!

Field of Flowers – The Beginning

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes [singing an old David Bowie song off key]. Only half way through the first month of the year and I’m updating and changing my goal lists. Yeah, and adding to it. I have accomplished some stuff though! That counts, right?

I’ve decided I cannot bring myself to baste hexagons to paper pieces any longer. I’ve been spoiled by the ease of printing and piecing using Inklingo. That leaves me with two options for my GFG quilt, Field of Flowers. I can either put all the 2″ squares I have cut (probably around 2000) into my leader/ender pile and begin again using printed hexagons or figure out a way to piece them without basting them to paper.

I opted for figuring out a way to piece them without the paper. Since coming to this decision, my new options are: 1) I can cut each 2″ square into the proper shape or 2) get creative. I opted for #2 as I cannot see myself cutting out .75″ hexagons from 2000 2″ squares! Now I have to figure out what to do with the paper pieces I purchased.

My new plan involves printing out some freezer paper templates using Inklingo Collection #3 and ironing them onto the 2″ squares. Then I hope to be able to piece them together with a running stitch instead of a whip stitch. All this sounds like a good plan but will only be effective if the freezer paper stays in place while I’m stitching. I’ll update you later.

Next dilemma. . .  I cannot decide upon the perfect layout for my Hey Diddle Diddle project and because of Cathi’s sweet little project using 30′s reproduction fabrics I’m conflicted as to embroidering the characters in red with red & white fabrics in the alternate blocks or embroidering in colors with 30′s repro fabric in the alternate blocks. Since I have no large stash of either color way, it doesn’t matter which one I choose, I just need to choose!

Moving on. . . I thought since I have a couple of hexagon projects in the works I’d join the Great Hexagon Quilt Along, you know. . . just for inspiration. It didn’t take me long to decide to start work on my own version of the mosaic hexagon quilt that first inspired Robyn to start the quilt along. [sigh] I cannot help it. Have I told you I plan to live forever? Quilting will be allowed in the Kingdom of Heaven — I’m sure of it.

My list of WIPs grows each week. . . up to 16 now and 2/3 of them are hand work. [You have my permission to fall down in a fit of hysterical laughter at this point.] I figured since I was printing .75″ hexagons and 1.5″ diamonds from vintage looking or reproduction fabrics I might as well print out some 1.25″ hexagons for the mosaic quilt. I can print 16- 1.25″ hexagons, 16- .75″ hexagons & 24- 1.5″ diamonds from one FQ. That gives me pieces for three different projects from one FQ. I like that. Now I need to purchase more reproduction fabrics.

Off to print more diamonds and hexagons and humming, “Bring on the Day” by Charlotte Martin from the “Sweet Home Alabama” movie soundtrack.