The quilt's coming too

I've not been too good when it comes to updating about my 10 year quilt project (the Hexagon Star).  Actually, I've not been too good at working on it at all lately!  There's been too much else happening.

The girls at sewing gave me a lovely bundle of fabric to be used in my mega project.  Alison, my partner in crime, even chose a "difficult" fabric with instructions for it to be fussy cut.

I've washed all the fabric, including a pile of background fabrics I bought at the quilt show recently and I'll be packing it to come to England with us.  I have a plastic tub of sewing essentials on a ship heading to the UK so I'll have plenty of sewing to keep me occupied while we're away.  I even packed a cross stitch - something I haven't done for many years.  It was my favourite sewing project before I discovered patchwork and quilting.

I'm quite looking forward to looking for quilt shops as we cruise around.

The green fabric at right is my NZ choice from Katipatch, those to the left of that were from the girls at sewing.  The brown stripey one is from Alison - a fussy cutting challenge!

 

Quilt show in Melbourne

I had a lovely day out on Saturday with my friend Tammy.  We went to the quilt show in Melbourne.  We made an early start for the 1 1/2 hour drive and had out tickets in hand before the doors opened.  While we stood in the line of women waiting to get in they had a new feature.  A group of people working for the quilt show in one capacity or another came out and stood along the line doing the Macarena!  A bit of entertainment while we waited.

I always like getting to events like this early because as it nears lunchtime it gets so busy that you can't get near enough to a stall to properly look at anything!  Since living out of the city I've become less and less tolerant of crowded places.  Don't like it at all.

I was thrilled to see my sewing buddy, Alison, got first prize for her miniature version of our "10 year" quit project.  These hexagons are half the size of the already ridiculously small ones we're using for our quilts.  Not a very good photo taken on my phone without a flash but you get the idea.  Well done Alison!

Ten year project update

I had barely sewn a stitch from about November to February.  Seems I lost motivation.  I knew when we had our first 4-10pm sewing group for the year I'd be inspired again, and so it was.

Alison and I are a couple of years into a 10 year project - each making our own version of what we call our Hexagon Star Quilt.  I had only very vaguely in mind what I'd need to achieve each year to come anywhere close to the 10 years of getting it finished.  But, at our first sewing evening for the year in February, Alison had a year by year planner of what she wanted to get done.  I went home and did the same, working out how many of each block I'd need to do per year to come somewhere close to the 10 year mark.  It was a bit of a shock!

Each year I need to make 6 "star" and 11 "hexagon" blocks.  So in theory, by that February sewing group I should have made 12 stars and 22 hexagons.  I was nowhere close!  I had just 6 stars and 10 hexagons done in 2 years.  I do have quite a pile of pieces cut out.  I decided to put aside all other projects and concentrate on this one until I catch up to where I need to be with it.

Since our March get together I've not let a single day go by without working on my project.  It's amazing what progress you can make when you concentrate on it.  I have also caught the train to work a few times and that gives me some extra sewing time.  In three weeks I have made another 3 stars and 6 hexagons.  I'm getting closer to catching up. 

New Quilts from America

When I booked my trip to America I made sure to allow extra in my budget to bring home a couple of old quilts.  I really did only intend to buy a couple so when I found two lovely ones at an antique market in Kentucky I thought that would be it.  But then.... we were in a second hand store in New Holland, Pennsylvania and I saw a lovely pink, white and green quilt hanging over a railing.  The price was right so now I had three to somehow get home.  On our last weekend we visited an indoor antique market in Adamstown and I was quite pleased with myself to reach our meeting point having only bought a few vintage feedsacks.  The problem I hadn't counted on was Tammy.  She arrived at the place we agreed to meet and was about to burst with enthusiasm - she'd seen a couple of quilts I would like.  I went off with her to look at them thinking that's all I'd do.  One of them was just my thing but I did try and walk away without buying it.  While we stood at an automatic teller to get out some cash I started thinking that I would regret not buying that quilt.  I never see such good quality old quilts in Australia at such a bargain price.  So, I went back to the lady and bought it!

The hexagon star progress

I write about my quilting project rather sporadically on a separate blog.  But with my holiday to America less than 2 days away I thought I'd show you the reason I first wanted to go.

A quilting companion and I are both making our own version of a lovely historic quilt we saw in a book. At our monthly quilting group a couple of weeks ago we pinned up all the blocks we've done so far so we can see our progress.

I can't wait to see the quilt "in person"!!

Other interests

I decided to keep little blogs of my or our other interests.  You can reach them from the pages at the top of this blog.

For a brief daily update of what the weather has been like and some photos of Australia : http://dailyinoz.blogspot.com/

For my patchwork and quilting projects : http://hexagonstarquilt.blogspot.com/

The 10 year patchwork project

Not at all narrowboat related but something I plan to be doing while we cruise.
It is a project I started a year ago at my once a month quilt group.  I call it the Hexagon Star Quilt.

Alison, one of my fellow group members, and I saw this quilt in the book "Quilts of Virginia, 1607-1899" and fell in love with it.  It comprises approximately 25,000 hexagons and the original quilt is displayed on a bed at "Scotchtown" in Virginia, USA.

Quilt on the bed at Scotchtown

Close up of quilt

Alison and I excitedly began what we knew would be a very long term project.  These hexagons are small - the blurb beside the photo in the book says they are 1/2 inch hexagons.  When I first looked at the size of a half inch hexagon I faltered - it seemed insane to make a large quilt out of pieces so small.  But... carried along by the quilt group's enthusiasm I made a start.  Now I'm addicted!

A month ago I received a panicked email from Alison saying the hexagons we were using were too big!!  How could that be?!  Well, sometimes hexagons used in quilting are measured by the size of one of the six sides and sometimes they are measured across the entire hexagon.  There is a BIG difference.  The ones we are making are 1/2 inch along one of the six sides. We can't see the quilt in person and the pieces looked so ridiculously small it never occurred to us that they could be too big.

Alison and I held an emergency coffee meeting at my place and looked at her calculations.  If we made the exact same quilt it would be 5 metres long!  Hmmm... rather too large for our bed.  We are adapting the size to suit our respective beds (Alison is buying a bigger bed so she can make a bigger quilt!).  We decided to make one of the star blocks in the correct size hexagons and use it for a label on the back of our quilts. I'm going to write a message on the label explaining that this is the size pieces used in the original quilt.

The upside of our error is that I now only need to make 18,000 hexagons. What a bonus!

My first few blocks

The single hexagon has a paper of the correct size on top - much smaller!

The correct size hexagon isn't even the size of my thumb nail