FITF: Film in the Fridge | modern quilts, clothing, fabric, and photos

hooked on hexagons

Posted on March 8, 2010

I knew I would be. I don’t know why I put it off for so long.

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So I caught the hexagon bug, and badly (and it seems I’m not the only one!).

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It started innocently enough – I just figured I’d try one or two to see what the fuss was about. I always loved looking at all the beautiful hexagon projects on Flickr, and in my mind I knew that it was something I’d eventually get around to trying, but I had convinced myself that I didn’t like handsewing and consequently wouldn’t like these.

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So anyway, needing a bit of entertainment (and a little fabric fix while I was going to be away from my machine) I cut up a bunch of fabric and took it with me to California. And now I can’t stop – I’m working on hexagons in a few sizes, flea market fancy hexagons, and hexagons to match a quilt… plus, (not pictured) hexagons in Echino and also Little Folks voile!

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I don’t know what they’ll turn into, if anything, but they sure are fun to make. If you haven’t tried them yet, you might want to! Below are a few posts I looked at before starting –

The Sometimes Crafter – two posts about sewing hexagons here and here.

Posie Gets Cozy – Hexagon Piecing

Here you can print out your desired size hexagon templates (or you can purchase them already cut here).

And lastly, in the right sidebar on this page, you’ll see a listing of what size squares of fabric you’ll need for the various hexagon sizes. (I think this is what convinced me to start making these – the realization that I could just cut out squares of fabric rather than having to cut out hexagonal shapes!)

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But don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Posted in Household Sewing - bags, napkins, pillows | Tagged denyse schmidt, english paper piecing, flea market fancy, handmade, handsewing, hexagons, Tutorials | 36 Comments

moonlight in the trees

Posted on March 3, 2010

I hope you’re not tired of Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks yet! (I’m not!)

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I started this one right after I finished the first version in the playground palette. I cut all the squares, and then I must have gotten distracted by other things, because it sat for a while, until one day when I found myself (Morgan) vacuuming around it, and figured it was time to sew those squares together.

And I’m glad I did, because I think the moonlight palette is really lovely. The blues and purples are not colors I typically use, but they work together so nicely here, and with that little bit of brown… just perfect! (Anna Maria sure knows her stuff!)

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Once again, this is just a simple patchwork squares quilt, using squares that are 3 1/2″. I like the smaller sized squares for these fabrics, since the prints are a smaller scale as well.

Oh, and look at me using the correct pins for the job! A huge thank you to Anna Maria herself, who was so sweet to send along curved safety pins after seeing I was using straight pins. (thank you, thank you, thank you! these certainly do make the job easier!!)

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Little Folks voile fabrics purchased from Hawthorne Threads. Dobby dots and voile solids purchased from Fabricworm.

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Posted in Posts about Quilts | Tagged anna maria horner, handmade, little folks, patchwork, patchwork squares, quilt, quilting, voile | 39 Comments

and I present to you… the flying farfalle quilt!

Posted on March 1, 2010

So… I love most all of my quilts, but I really love this one. I’m not sure what it is – it’s a really simple design, but there’s something about it that makes me smile when I see it. Part of it could also be the name – I still laugh when I say it, especially since I’m still not quite sure how ‘farfalle’ is actually pronounced. (And everyone I ask seems to say it differently, so I may never know!)

Anyway, you may recall that I made this quilt so that I could use up some of the Little Folks scraps left over from my voile string quilt. I just couldn’t bear to see those fabulous fabrics go to waste, so this design was perfect, since it only uses up tiny little scraps.

It took me a while to decide how to quilt it. I decided that I didn’t want any quilting lines to go through the printed fabric bits, so I ended up with this straight line quilting on the diagonal. This worked to outline each of the farfalles (what is the plural of ‘farfalle’ anyway?!), highlighting each one in its own little diamond. I love it.

I knew I wanted gray for the backing, since I really love how gray looks with all these colorful bits. I was practically out of my favorite Kona Coal, so I went with a Kona medium gray, with a bit of the coal as a strip on the side.

There’s a little strip of the dobby dots in raspberry, which looks so fabulous with the gray, and a little pieced section where I ran out of gray.

I’m definitely in love, and I think this one’s a keeper!

Previous post about this quilt can be found here

Fabrics used: Ikea white sheet, Anna Maria Horner Little Folks voile scraps, Kona Coal & Medium Gray for backing, with extra pieces of Little Folks voile.

Measures: 58″ x 64″ (I think!)