EPP Hexie Diamond Quilt update

These five EPP hexie diamonds, in all their Bonnie and Camille beauty, are the final few full diamonds for my four year old WIP.  These ones were made this summer and I enjoyed the peaceful, rhythmic stitching of them in the evenings of sometimes testing days.  Handstitches of any variety can be very soothing, I find.

So, this is what 23 EPP hexie diamonds look like - each one about 3 hrs worth of stitching (I'm not particularly speedy).  It doesn't really look like much, does it?

Hopefully, it looks a little more substantial all laid out like this.  What do you think?

There were several layout options considered for this quilt, and I have at different times had different preferences for which to choose.  Now, though I think I quite like the full scrappy patterning of the layout above.

Mind you, having sat down to doodle out how to finish this quilt, I think I might only be just about halfway through piecing for it!  As you can see, this current layout yields a quilt wider than it is long and I don't like it so much turned through 90 degrees. So, it needs lengthening and some kind of bordering and squaring off.  Only a gazillion more hexies to go then!

That said, I have high hopes for how nice it will look when it's done!

Something to think about

Have you ever started a project, left it for a while and when you came back to it wondered what to do with it again?

I feel that way about these hexie diamonds, as I refer to them.

I think when I first cut a gazillion hexagons from my B&C stash I had thoughts of a quilt laid out in a diamond grid with a pathway of white/cream hexies separating them like sashing.

Three years on, and only 6 hexie diamonds actually stitched (!!!), I don't know how I feel about this project.

Have I stopped liking it?

Am I just disappointed because it's so lacking in progress?

What to do next -

do I hide it back under the bed and hope one day to be struck with inspiration? or that it might in fact just get 'lost'?

or do I make up more diamonds and see what happens? - there are many, many more hexies already cut for the purpose.

It has potential and options, doesn't it?

Maybe I could learn to love it again if I just spent some time with it.  I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel yet, I don't think. And, if it's the design I'm not so hot about any more, that can always be played around with later, right?

Perhaps I should nudge it up from that UFO list on the left over there into the WIPs?  Oh, go on then!

IRMA gets dressed up

I made this sweet little EPP Nosegay block at Fiona's class on last year's Stitch Gathering (Sept 2015) and decided that Saturday was the day to make it into something pretty and usable.

So Irma, one of those small cushion fillers that Ikea was selling for pence, got a sweet new cover to dress herself up.  The filler measures 14" square but is a little loosely filled for my liking.  I prefer my cushions well stuffed, so I reckoned if I made my cover quite a bit smaller that it would squish in and fill it up much better.

It worked.  Yay!  All pudgy and lovely at a finished 11.75" square.  (I made a 12.5" block and used a ⅜" seam to stitch around the cushion.)

A simple envelope back made this a speedy project, even if I did have to stretch out the actual stitching over 5 hrs between many, many interruptions.  It was one of those days.

Anyway, this little couch cushion is for Cutesy Tootsie to rest her crazy haired head on.

So, can you tell who sits where?  I'll help by telling you that the teenager's cushion is on his chair on the other side of the room as far away from his parents as he can sit if he must be in the same room as us fogies! ;-)

New EPP Project in the Planning

I have been missing having an EPP project on the go and decided to make more use of these 5am starts that I can't seem to shake.  So, in old-school fashion I've been tracing hexagons on fabric (more Bonnie & Camille) and cutting and cutting and cutting.

Yes, I know about Sizzix and how helpful it could be to this preparation but I don't have one and actually I have found it reasonably therapeutic and distracting to trace and cut, trace and cut, about eight hundred times.  My IG buddies have beaten me into an admission though that Sizzix would definitely have been a quicker and easier path - they wore me down with their rational arguments!  Maybe I'll have a Sizzix for my next EPP project after this...

So, here's the result of all my chopping so far.  It's a lot more hexies than it looks!  I'm hoping that I will piece this into diamond shapes and maybe arrange them in a star/flower layout, though I may change my mind by the time I finally get to that point.  Now that they are all cut, I'm itching to start basting and whip stitching but there's a lot else to do just now so I will hold off a little longer and this will become a perfect summer pick-me-up project.

So, do tell.  If you were to buy a Sizzix for the purposes of EPP what shape die would you consider really worth the purchase?

Quilt Now BOM - Issue 11

Getting ever closer to the finish of this BOM methinks, and it's very exciting.  I've even seen that Reene has sent her finished top off to be quilted, but spoilsports that she and Quilt Now are the pic snippet was enough to tell it was the quilt, but not enough to actually see anything properly - sigh (patience not being much of a virtue here lately).

So, issue 11 presented me with a little EPP dresden quarters stitching which was just perfect for Sunday evening stitching on the sofa.

I wasn't as speedy as I'd hoped and had to wait until yesterday to applique the last two dresden quarters to their low volume backgrounds.

Looking pretty and summery in those fabrics I think.

Playing detective a little, I'm guessing these will be for the corners of the quilt top's final borders.  At least I hope so because I cut directional lv fabrics for two of my backgrounds without thinking and have tried to arrange the layout to keep them right way up!  I'm sure I can remedy it if my Miss Marple skills are a bit off kilter.

Once again this was a fun month's skill in the Mystery BOM.  I'm not a stranger to EPP but I do love my hexies and don't often try other shapes - I really should get out more!

Apple Core Epp quilt

I finally got my EPP back in the zone to finish off my giant apple core quilt as inspired by Fiona Poppy Makes' quilt from the very first edition of the Quilt Now magazine.

All of the apple cores have been pieced together by hand. I made my quilt a bit larger than Fiona's using 99 apple cores in 11 rows of 9.  It finishes up approx 56.5" x 66.5" which is big enough as a topper for a double bed with no overhang and starting just below the pillows.  For me it's big enough to wrap up well in on the sofa because the nights have been freezing here this week!

I know this quilt would have been a nice one to hand quilt with cotton perle but honestly, I just don't have the time at the moment and really, really not wanting to carry this over into 2015, I decided I would just get on with quilting it in some echoing lines about 0.5" from the seams.

I did take my time over the biased binding to keep the lovely shape of the apple cores (mostly) in tact.  This was my first effort with bias binding a quilt and making my own bias binding. Let's just say it worked better than I expected but I'm not in a big hurry to be "bendy binding" again.  There wasn't really anything wrong with the process, though perhaps I have just been a little impatient due to lack of time and it did take longer trying to ease around those convex and concave curvatures.

Here's a wee picture of the back of the quilt just because I quite like how modern it feels in comparison with the front fabric selections and because I love the quilting lines on it.  Reminds me of a loose rope weave effect.  This is a fabric I picked up in Ikea a couple of years ago and never had the opportunity to use until now.

Anyhoo, enough to-do, except to declare this as another finish for my Quarter 4 Finish Along Goals.  Tickety tick!!

All in the preparation

It's been a while since I've had a paper piecing project on the go.  I have been tempted by some other patterns I've seen lately but when I spotted Fiona's Apple Core quilt in the first issue of Quilt Now it was a clincher.

I like the large size of the pieces and decided to trial two apple cores just to be sure I could manage it before committing to cutting all the fabrics.  Seemed to go together well, though it's definitely different from stitching 1" hexies!

When I was deciding what fabrics to use for this project I wanted something soft and pastel (possibly inspired by the sorbet theme of the Quilt Now magazine) and I wanted to use what I have, not have to go buying more fabrics.  As I pulled, I realised that my selections were beginning to look much like the fabric pull for my Farmer's Wife Sampler a few summers back.

So, I pulled down the FW box and rescued those fabrics from languishing unloved and unused.  It was a spur of the moment thing and in a funny way, I feel a slight sense of relief about them.  I have been trying to decide if I will ever pick up the Farmer's Wife blocks again.  I only made about 20 and haven't known if I should do more to finish or just move on because my motivation for it vanished.  So, it seems I've decided to move on and think the apple cores will be lovely in my previously FW fabrics.

As always with EPP there's a lot of preparation, so this week I've been cutting and cutting and cutting templates and fabrics, and I know there's a lot of basting ahead, but once I get that done I will have a lovely relaxing handwork project.  I really am looking forward to seeing it progress.

It's a Circle!

As I approached those final teeny slivers of the outer circle I must admit I wondered if this hexie globe would actually defeat me, but taking it one very careful step at a time I now have a circular piece of stitching!  Wayhay!  For some reason I am very taken by this design (which is from Geta Grama), I think I just think it's really clever.

Anyway, off now to work out how to keep the circular shape when I take out the border papers!

EPP taking shape!

The mysterious EPP pieces I cut before Easter are now beginning to come together nicely.  In the words of Rolf "can you tell what it is yet?"

I'm not sure if this photo is giving you a proper perspective of this project but I do hope so.  I bought this pattern by download from Romanian Quilt Studio. I fell in love the instant I saw it back last summer and have been not-so-patiently waiting to make a start among all the other projects I've had on the go.  Geta calls this pattern  Flower Ball, but I prefer to call it my hexi globe.  I just love the way those irregular hexagons create that spherical perspective.  Can you see it?

I bought the smaller version (scroll to the bottom of her page) for just a few dollars, though sadly I note that it seems only to be available now as an addition to the larger pattern which is 38".  The smaller version comes as a pdf with a printable pattern of 121 pieces measuring 25" diameter and is easily taped together and then cut into the requisite pieces ready for piecing back together as per the numbered chart provided.  So far it's all been nice and straightforward if a little strange to be piecing irregular shapes that do not lay exactly on top of one another.  I am still a little bit apprehensive about those final slivers of pieces that will finish the circle eventually.  Anyway, not thinking about it yet and so far I'm having great fun!