Hexagon Flowers and my way of making them.

I have just joined a group where I will swap a hexagon flower with another  member each month.  This way I will get the benefit of  fabrics which are different to the ones I already have, and I'll also benefit from other people's perception of colours which work well together. This  will  add variety to  my  future hexagon flower quilt, a garden of flowers.

These are the first four flowers I have made and one of these flowers will be heading off to a new owner tomorrow.

It is quite some time since I have done one of these so at first I was getting in rather a muddle.  I read several ways that other people construct the hexagons but paper clips and clothes pegs kept snagging and knotting my thread.  In the end it was trial and error that developed the following method which works for me.

To make a hexagon with 1" sides, cut a 2 3/4" square and snip off the corners.


With wrong side facing you, lay the hexagon template  in the centre of  the fabric and mark the position of the corners.  Remove the card.

  Start a tacking thread with a tiny stitch (see my knot in the top left hand corner) about 1/8" outside the line of the marked hexagon.

Working anticlockwise take tiny stitches in the centre of each side and at each corner.

Take your final stitch at the corner where you started, then take another tiny running stitch to take the thread through onto the right side of the fabric.

Place the hexagon card back in position and gently gather the fabric on the thread, so holding the card in place.  Keep gathering until you have nice crsip edges where the fabric comes over the card.

Your card will now stay nicely in place while you stitch the corners.

Starting at the same corner as your thread make your corner in the usual way with a crease then a fold and stitch the fold down with two or three stitches.

 

 Slip the thread under the fabric, take a small back stitch about half way along the side then repeat the crease and fold on the second corner.

Continue in this way until all corners are done.

Use a small pair of sharp pointed scissors to carefully trim the seam allowance to about 1/4". 

 Now to find some fabric to make  petals to suit this centre.

Civil War Quilt Blocks - Log Cabin

After the stress trying to put together the last few Civil War Quilt blocks it seemed so strange to be working with simple right angles.  Sheer joy. So this is what I whipped up after breakfast this morning and it turned out the requisite 8 1/2" square.  There's a bit of an optical illusion but I've checked that all the strips are the right width.

Pattern taken from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts

and a check of my understanding of the assembly method at Lillian's Cupboard

I've been doing a lot of reading lately and have been fascinated by three of Henning Mankell's books , this time ones not connected with the detective Wallander.  Am thoroughly enjoying translations of Scandavian crime fiction. So I recommend Henning Mankell's

The Return of the Dancing Master

Italian Shoes

The Man from Beijing.

A very thoughtful writer.

Civil War Quilts - Richmond

Didn't seem to have as much trouble with this block as the previous one, but it's still not really good.  At the outside edge I now have the very scantest of scant 1/4" seam allowances.   It is 8 1/2" square.  Next time I am definitely going to allow 3/16" seam allowances on the outside edges to allow for trimmimg up when finished sewing. This time it might be an idea if I put a border around it straight away before it starts to unravel.

One thing that I got wrong was the colour allotment. I find it hard to keep track of the colours with this light, medium-light etc descriptions. Somehow I even managed to unnecessarily add a fifth colour.

Civil War Quilts - 6 Richmond, by Barbara Brackman

Have to wait for the weekend now to see what BB has in store for us next.

Kansas Troubles Quilt Block or The Case of the Vanishing Points

I'll say it straight away.  There is no way I will be making a complete quilt  from this block pattern.  It is hard.  If I did make a quilt I would have to call it The Quilt of the Vanishing Points. Now that I've muddled my way through I have the feeling that my work would have been more accurate and done more speedily if I had hand-pieced it.  With hand-piecing there is more wiggle room. I also know that I feel more comfortable with a 3/16" seam allowance

This is my effort made up to the Kansas Troubles block pattern from Barbara Blackman's Civil War Blocks blog.

I wonder what she has in store for us this coming week.

Hot Day and Kansas Troubles quilt block

The forecast for today is 40 degrees.  Hot, Hot, Hot.  But there's something about the early morning of a hot day which is quite beautiful, a combination of the light, the stillness, the shadows. The house is all buttoned down in preparation for the day.

Barbara Brackman has put up her weekly block on Civil War Quilts.  I was going to use the word brainteaser to describe these blocks but that's not the right word.  It's not a brainteaser as it is all so beautifully clear and logical.  Rather it's a teaser for your hand-eye co-ordination and your nimble fingers (or lack of them!).

 

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/01/5-kansas-troubles.html

This is the sample Block No 5 - Kansas Troubles.  I'll cut out the components today but I think I'll wait until  quilt32 at Lillian's Cupboard   has had time to make up her block and photograph and describe the steps before attempting the construction.  One thing I've decided though is that I'll use fabrics which show up clearly against the dark green background of the cutting board.  I find it difficult to align the ruler with a cut edge of fabric when it is a similar tone as the background.

Accuracy, three points and seam allowance.

Accuracy in cutting and stitching is vital.  I've been told that over and over again and I respect that.  But every now and then you start to think that there's something funny going on.  After all my care why doesn't my square turn out the way it should.

Take 4 Texas Tears from  Civil War Quilts by Barbara Brackman.  I've been cutting from that pattern at the moment.  Usually it's a 1/4"  seam allowance and that's what I've been using. This shows the back of the spot where three triangles join,  The little points are sticking out in just the right place.


Now if I use another 1/4" seam allowance to join this nice straight edge to another piece of fabric then I am going to nip off the point of the centre triangle, because where those two lines of stitching cross is less than 1/4" from the cut edge for the seam.

This diagram shows the small square at the back where the three triangles meet, a square with sides of 1/4".  Calculate the length of the diagonal of this square.  Then half the length of the diagonal is the amount of fabric you have available for a seam allowance. It's much less than the 1/4" that you want to use.

 I hope you can follow my maths.  Think of Pythagoras Theorem in Maths at school.

Perhaps I've been reading the wrong books but I can't find any reference to it in the articles on joining points.

So what am I meant to do.  Fudge it ?  That's not exactly being accurate !

Embroidered Flower Quilt

Now that the Goldwork is finished it's time to get back to my embroidered flower quilt- six different flowers set in a diamond pattern,  Five of them are finished , the tulip still to do.

The Carnation

No matter how hard I try I always pull my stitches too tightly in this type of embroidery and usually I put some sort of fine backing on the material.  But this time I forgot and now I am paying for it !  Everything looks nice and smooth when it is in the hoop but once it comes out of the hoop there is plenty of puckering which doesn't seem to disappear with ironing.  Hopefully the quilting might disguise some of the puckering.

The Cornflower

The Double Rose

The Pansy

The Pink Rose