Brontosaurus Pillow

Brontosaurus Pillow, originally uploaded by RamonaX.

Woo hoo! Clearing through files on my desktop, I found a picture of one of my favorite pillows! I made it and sold it so quickly, I didn't think I had a photo... but I found this today.

Sometimes it's good to see past work that you haven't seen in a while. I've gone through all sorts of sewing phases over the years... for a while, I was making dresses for friends, then I made hats and baby dresses and that phase transformed into patchwork hats and dresses, then I made a few patchwork bags.

I guess I've always been attracted to patchwork because I have always been on the poorer side of things, and I could only find bits and pieces of good fabrics, so patchwork was the way for me. It's a challenge for me to be on the lookout for cheap or free fabrics... and still be able to create what I want!

A few years ago I made my first quilt, and I was hooked on the patchwork portion of it... and that led to sewing these patchwork pillows. Most recently I've been interested in sewing art quilts with vivid imagery like gig posters out of fabric... and now the actual quilting is becoming my main objective. With a few hours spent on stitching, you can make something amazing out of something very plain.

Oh... for those of you keeping track, I've stitched up 3 more rows on my squid quilt in the last 2 days, so I'm slowly getting there! (16 out of 50 done).

Busy Times

I've been slowly working on my squid quilt.  I'm sewing the hexies together in angular rows, and I'm on the 14th one (50 altogether).  I'm hoping that sewing the rows together will not be too hard.  I would try to sew a couple together now, except I really want to pick out a border fabric first and make extra hexies to go around the whole thing.  If I do that, I should sew the border hexies on the ends of each row before sewing the individual rows together.

That said, I'm having a hard time deciding on a fabric for the borders of this quilt.  Currently, I'm thinking a solid (or very subtle pattern) aqua blue color.  If anyone has a suggestion as to a specific fabric they would use ~ I would love to hear it!   Eventually I want to quilt the water with a free motion pebble pattern as shown here.  I LOVE how that kind of quilting looks, but I don't know if I can do it well enough for this quilt or not.  Time to practice!!
 
I have to get over to Modern Domestic already.  I keep hearing about it through PMQG and I still haven't had the chance to get there myself.  From what I understand it is an open sewing studio where you can pay by the hour to use their space, tools and machines... and I'm guessing they would have a great sewing machine in which I can try some pebble quilting with!  I have a few smaller projects that I can test it on and if they turn out good, then I'll try the quilt. 

There is plenty to do, and my project list will take me a few years (or decades) to complete, so I've given up on being in any kind of rush.  I just work as I can, and try to enjoy the process.  I was hoping to be much farther in this squid project, but times are very busy for my husband and I work-wise.  We have a small screenprinting business together that we run out of our home studio.  It's just the two of us, and he is having a big surgery in 3 weeks and afterwards he won't be able to print for at least 6 weeks.  That means that we have to work as hard and as fast as we can to get all our work done by surgery time... then we have to hope that we will have brought in enough $$ to get us through 6 weeks of recovery time, and the deductible.   So... not much sewing time for me right now.  Luckily when he is all laid up, I'm going to take advantage of the time and try to wail through a bunch of neglected sewing projects!

Here's a quick pic of a cute caterpillar I found on our recycling bin the other day... just wanted to share ~ he's so cute (check out his little feet)!  

... and another Pin Cushion!

Since I wasn't thrilled with how my first pin cushion came out, I decided to make another one using the same idea with the hexagons, only constructing it better.  First I had to sew the hexies together, I was able to use the pretty hexies I got in a previous PMQG swap.  With the paper in them, I find I can bend them a little to get tighter stitching:

So this is where my process upkeeping fails... I get so wound up in a project I completely forget to photograph as I go.  I took a picture of the cordouroy as I was sewing, but the rest of this got away from me and so all I have is another finished project without the pics leading me there.

Oh well, I was able to finish a nicer pin cushion for the swap later tonight at the PMQG meeting.  I hope whoever gets it is happy with it :) 
For any new projects, I will work on my 'picture-taking in a timely manner' skills and hopefully have more to show in future posts!

Middle of October.... Already??

So much has been happening, I haven't had much time to put a post together!  I just spent a few days up in Seattle with my daughter who took her state board exams to be a licensed cosmetologist.  She is moving home in a few weeks too.  Plus my husbands hip surgery is November 15th, so we are trying to get as much work done as possible before he is laid up for a while.

Amongst all of this, I still have been making at least a little time to sew.   For the next Modern Quilt Guild meeting there is a pin cushion swap... FUN!  I had a great time playing around with some smaller pieces of fabric and this is what I came up with:

It's a little wonky... I didn't use a pattern, just sort of wung-it.  Of course I HAD to use hexagons ~ I swear, I'm totally addicted to those little things!  The top is quilted with wool batting under the top circle, and there is a pillow of flax seeds and lavender on the inside in the bottom to weigh it down.  The rest is stuffed with poly fiberfill.  I found a really cute old button to use for the top too. 
If I have time, I will try a second one and make it a little more clean looking for the swap... we'll see how that goes!

I've slowly been working on my squid quilt as well.  It does take a bit of time to sew the hexies together, usually I sew in my sewing room and listen to books on tape... but since this will take a while I came up with a way to move pieces around so that I can take it downstairs to the living room and spend a little time with the family too.  I found a lid to a container and flipped it over.  The divets around the edges hold my thread and needles fine and I can layout 8 hexies to take with me:

So far I have 7 lines of hexies sewn together and I'm working on the eighth:

At this point, I'm itchy to do some smaller projects... but I'm afraid if I do that, I will lose steam on this project ~ and I love it so much ~ I just have to follow through!  I wish I had WAY more sewing time.   Oh well, at least I'll have something to keep me busy over the slow winter months.

Piecing Time

I just signed up for Rossie's Process Pledge so I will start with the project I'm currently working on... my squid quilt.  After I got all my little 3/4" hexies made, I laid them all out on a big table according to my pattern, without caring how the water blues looked.  Here is how it looked:

Then I spent almost 4 days re-arranging over and over again until I was happy with the blends.  It turned out to be a bit tougher to blend the colors than I thought ~ but now I love it:

So last week I started the big process of piecing the hexagons together.  This is one of the first hand-stitched projects I've done, so I tried a few different ways, but the way I found to work for me best is to:
•1 run needle under back of hexie and through the corner, so the knot is under the fabric and not showing:

•2 with WRONG sides together I start my stitch:

•3 I use a ladder type stitch and go all the way across to the other side

•4 because I feel the need for stability, I flip it around and go back across one more time:

• then I run the stitch to the center of the hexies and pull my needle through to the back:

• from there I tie off the thread in a stable knot on the backside:

• and voila... the front tends to have no showing thread:

At this stage, I'm starting to consider the edging of this quilt.  I'm thinking a solid color fabric maybe... or I have some nice blueish silk with green strands running through it that could look nice with this, but I don't know about mixing silk and cotton in the same quilt.  I'm also trying to decide if the edging fabric should be made into more hexies and added to what I have so far, then when I sew the straight edges, the hexagon shapes will be visible.  So much to consider... luckily I have plenty of time while I piece these together!