Begining to put my hexagons together

Once all the fabric for my hexagons had been cut and attached to their paper counterparts (see here), it was time to set about joining them all together! 

When I started to do this, I hadn't really entirely decided upon the final design of my quilt, which obviously wasn't ideal but I was too impatient to get going. I did know that I wanted to join the different fabrics in a random way so started by putting all my hexagons into a bag so I could jumble them up and pick one at.

I began by simply piecing my hexagons together in any old order, not really paying attention to the shape it was becoming, but trying to attach as many together using the same length of thread. For this joining process I'm simply using plain white thread that I bought at Hobbycraft, and have 1000m of. I'm also using a 'between' needle, as I remember reading somewhere that these are one of the best types to use for hand quilting. 

As I got going a bit, I decided that it would be easier for me if I attached my hexagons in a hexagonal shape, so I set about joining them together to achieve this. 

As for how I've been attaching the hexagons together, I have been using a whip stitch over the edges of two hexagons, placed right sides together, like so:

I've found this method to work well for me, and goes relatively quickly. I've simply been making sure to make the stitches at the ends of the hexagons really tight and small to ensure there are no gaps when it's all turned out the right way.

Here is the progress of the quilt top, so far (which is about five days into starting the joining)

And a shot of the back too:

I have also decided that as I join the hexagons I'm going to take out the papers from the middle hexagons. I figured this would help make the fabric easier to work with as the paper obviously holds it stiff. 

I have therefore taken out all the middle papers, leaving only the hexagons around the outer edge with their papers intact, and here is what my quilt top looks like so far:

You can see the tacking stitches in the outer row of hexagons, where the paper is still being held, and these will be taken out when the next row of the large hexagon has been completed.

Through doing this process, I've decided that I want to keep this section of the quilt as a hexagon, rather than squaring it off as was my original plan. My plan, therefore, is to continue joining the hexagons together in this manner until I run out!

Hexagon preparation

As mentioned here, I have been working on a paper pieced hexagon quilt. I have found the beginning stages a little tedious, and it took far longer than I expected to cut out 480 little hexagons. However, this has now all been done and the next step was to add fabric to each of these hexagons.

Here is a quick outline of the process I followed for turning the 11.5cm square pieces of cotton into the 7/8" hexagons.

I firstly cut each of the cotton squares into quarters.

Next, I folded one of the fabric squares around two edges of a hexagon, making sure to make the creases good and crisp, and pinched them firmly at the point. I then pushed my tacking thread through the fabric and paper near to that point, before making a small stitch to secure itself.

I continued around to the next point of the hexagon, folding firmly over the edge and securing with the thread. 

This process was continued until I had folded over each of the six edges of my hexagon, and I secured the thread with a small stitch on the wrong side of the hexagon, going through both layers of fabric.

This process left me with one small fabric-covered hexagon, all ready for sewing together to make my quilt top.

As it turned out, there were not 60 squares of fabric in each of the packs I had bought. Instead, I was missing around 12 of the squares I thought there would be, and one of the squares was missing some fabric, meaning I could only get two hexagons from it. This therefore meant I was approximately 50 hexagons shy of where I thought I'd be, but that should still be fine for the design I have intended for my quilt.

Here are around half of the prepared hexagons, just to give an idea of some of the fabrics that will be going into my quilt top.

Now that I've finished adding all of the fabric to my hexagons, I'm ready to start sewing them together, and I really am rather excited about that!

Craft to do list

Currently, I'm working on about several separate projects, all of which, surprisingly, are for me! I therefore am lagging behind in completing (or making real headway) in any of them. So, here's a list of what I'm currently crafting, or am meant to be crafting:

1. H.M.S. Victory model

This plastic model kit is one I bought for myself at Christmas with some Christmas money. It's been out of its box and occupying this coffee table since the very beginning of January. This is my weekend project at the moment as I don't find the light good enough in the evenings (even with a table lamp) so it's taking a pretty long time. I'm really looking forward to having this one finished (hopefully soonish) as it takes up a whole table! There are pretty much just the masts and sails left to do though so I'm hoping I'll have it done before too long.

2. 'Sampler des 4 saisons' cross-stitch

This is a cross-stitch I started back in March of last year, and has been packaged away until now, and blogged about here. I've been working on this again for about two weeks now, and am nearing completion of the middle section of the design. After that there'll just be the two borders to do. I'm currently finding that this is an excellent evening craft as it doesn't stop me watching TV and is also something I can do even with cold hands!

3. Hexagon quilt

As mentioned here, I'm intending on making a hexagon quilt, and as this is the craft I've most recently decided to do, it's the one I'm most excited about! So far, I've just decided on making the hexagons 7/8" and have printed out 480 little hexagons on regular printer paper. They now all need cutting out before I can start making the fabric hexagons so this is something I've been doing some evenings when I haven't felt like cross-stitching. I've done about half of the hexagons so far, and have been placing them in an origami box that I made from the box for my H.M.S. Victory model so it's nice and sturdy. This is taking a fair while, and it probably should be the last craft on my list, but I'm too excited about getting properly started on it!

4. Knitted Whippet

Like the pug I made in December (see here), this is a dog that I'm knitting for my friend (well, actually, her Mum). I haven't yet started this project, but have recently bought the wool. The whippet I will make was requested to be completely mink coloured, so that makes it easier in terms of the knitting as I won't need to change colour. This project doesn't need to be finished until mid-April so it's not particularly urgent and therefore I'll get to it at some point. 

5. Knitted English Bull Terrier 

Again, this knitted dog is for the same friend who wants the whippet, and is even less urgent as she doesn't need it completed until the summer (i.e. July). Again, I've recently bought the wool (at the same time as for the whippet), and will start it once I've at least finished the other knitted dog.

So, there you have my current craft list. I'm pretty excited about each of the projects (which helps), and they're keeping me plenty busy! I'll keep you posted about how each of them goes; I just don't know how long they will take!

Patchwork pieces

While we were walking round the shops sometime at the beginning of January (a while ago, I know), I found that Oxfam was selling packs of pre-cut patchwork pieces. They had two different options: a pack of 12 larger sized squares of sari fabric for £3.99, and a pack of 60 smaller squares of cotton fabric for £4.99. Both gave plenty of interesting patterns and a mix of colours, which I thought would look great in a quilt. 

Then, a couple of weekends ago, my wife's friend came around to borrow my sewing machine to make a patchwork quilt for her sister's birthday. This reminded me of the squares in Oxfam and so I sent my wife off the very next day to come back with a couple of packs for me; I didn't want to miss out on them!

We decided that it was more economical to buy the smaller sized squares as there were so many more in each pack, and that two packs would probably be adequate. Didn't want to go crazy, now. I figured that at £4.99 each they were quite a bargain and having enough fabric for the face of a quilt for under £10 was pretty good. Here are the packs that my wife came back with:

The first thing that both of us wanted to do was look through the different fabrics that were included, so here's a quick sample of those fabrics:

While I had just assumed that I would make a patchwork quilt using the pieces as the 11.5cm squares they came as, my wife then suggested that she might like a quilt made from hexagons. This then resulted in some researching on the web, resulting in me finding the traditional paper piecing method of making quilts. My wife thought they looked awesome, and I was becoming increasingly swayed (you know I like to try something new!). 

So, I was pretty much convinced on making a quilt using that method, but the next thing to decide was what size the hexagons would need to be. I managed to find a 'hexagon cutting guide' here, which allowed me to work out what size hexagon these squares would produce. Based on the squares being around 4.5" they would produce 2" hexagons. I then managed to find a printable for 2" hexagons here and laid one of the hexagons over a square to see how it would look. 

I decided that I thought these hexagons would be too large for the quilt, and had a think about whether I could use smaller hexagons without wasting too much fabric, as that would be no good! Dividing the square into four, I figured that I could get four 0.75" hexagons from each square of the fabric, so I went looking for a printable of hexagons that size. I found one here, and printed one of those out. These hexagons were significantly smaller than the first I printed, and seemed much cuter and more delicate. I laid four of these onto a patch:

The size of these hexagons definitely appealed to me more, although I'm aware that it would be four times as much work! So, I'm thinking that at some point (probably not in the too distant future) I'll start on making these patches into a traditionally paper pieced quilt. Here's looking forward to that!