Oktober 2019 begann ich einen Job, zu dem ich jeweils über eine Stunde pro Strecke pendeln musste, davon je 30 min im Zug. Gleichzeitig begann ich, mich für english paper piecing zu interessieren, und begann, Hexagons zu nähen.
Im Zug:
Auf dem Schiff:
Zuhause:
Anschließend wurden die Hexies gesammelt, sortiert und zu kleineren Clustern zusammen gefasst:
Irgendwann musste ich mir den das Layout des fertigen Quilts überlegen, auch um herauszufinden, wir groß ich mir den bereits vorhandenen Hexies überhaupt werden konnte. Dafür nutze ich ganz simpel Paint und einen aus einem PDF kopieren Hexi-grid.
Damit die weißen Linien nicht zu langweilig werden, habe ich mir bei Grit's Life weiße Stoffe mit verschiedenen aufdrucken und Texturen bestellt, die restlichen Farben bestehen alle aus Resten. IRL sieht das Layout ungefähr so aus:
Inzwischen sind schon mindestens zwei dieser größeren Sechsecke verbunden. Steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein.
...is not my forte, appearantly. Alternate title: Hey look, my quilt's got a little window!!
I did not see this coming. Probably because I had that part covered in my construction sketch. So I did just that, cut and ironed the green square and sewed it on top. Phew, there you go:
Before that, I had actually assembled all the patchwork pieces, but since that was just a case of pinning right sides together and sewing straight lines, I didn't take any pictures.
Simultaneously with the green square I cut two green circles - cut a green square, fold and iron it in half, fold and iron that in half and draw on a quarter circle with the center where all the folds meet. While I folded under the edges of the square twice, I tried two different things with the circles: for the smaller one, I folded under the edges twice, which was really a pain to iron/pin and looked all wonky while not attached yet. So for the bigger circle, I just ironed the edges under once, then pinned and sewed both circles to the base to see if they looked different, and if yes, which one looked better. I couldn't tell any differences, can you?
If you are confused now, congratulations on your exceptional visual memory! For everyone else, here's the design sketch for comparison:
Yeah. I rushed the sewing (and pinning etc) for the last circle, as my mother wanted me to clear the table off my sewing things and set it for dinner, so I somehow placed it into the completely wrong corner. Ugh. Thinking things through really doesn't seem to be my forte today. And while I'm not a perfectionist, I really liked my original design, so I put in a good movie, took out my seam-ripper and took the damn thing off. Pinned it in its correct place, took out a needle and some green thread and handsewed it back on (really too much effort to take out and set up the sewing machine again for one small circle...).
Oh, and speaking of realizing stupid, but fixable mistakes: When sewing on the border strips (labeled A & B in my sketch) I realized they were each missing 30cm. I have no idea where they went or rather what I was thinking when I cut (well, ripped) them out, but as most of these borders will be folded over to the backside, I don't sweat it. Because, really: I am done with the top part! Which means no more sewing machine for this project, which in turn means I can take it to my appartment (along with the tablecloth that will serve as backing) where the batting has been lying idly these two months, I think, and begin with the quilting. Yay! :)
No, this is not another Halloween-post, the title comes from German colloquial speech where you can refer to something very big as "Monster-whatever it is you're referring to". (Also "mammoth-...", but that's beside the point.)
The other reason I chose this title (besides teaching my non-German readers about the intricacies of German language) is because it always reminds me of this song, which in turn always cracks me up:
(If you don't speak German but feel that understanding the lyrics would make this song even more awesome, message me and I'll translate it for you ;) )
My very own monsterproject is also my very first quilt. Okay, scratch that, i did make a small patchwork quilt that now hangs on the wall above my bed, but that doesn't really count; also I didn't have any batting for that (and didn't want to buy any) so I cut apart a very cheap and very synthetic Ikea blanket. Well, it looks nice enough for decorative purposes, which is all I ever wanted.
I chose to make a quilt because
I find them fascinating
I wanted a project for winter that would keep me warm while I worked on it
and you can never have enough blankets.
I wanted to make this one bigger than the first small one, so I decided to make it blanket-sized: 1,5m*2m. At first, I didn't want any patchwork at all as this seemed so chliché (and I was afraid I'd mess up all the tiny joins etc), with all visual interest coming from contrasting quilting stitches. But trying to find a pattern that would cover the entire area, not be too complicated to stitch and still be pretty, I googled "geometrical patterns" and came across this:
I especially like the one in the middle of the upper row with the circles, although i think the one in the top-left corner would also make a beautiful quilt for a more skilled seamstress (btw: is there a masculine version for that word?)
Because that would have been a little too much patchwork for my liking, I drew a simpler version: (and coloured it with pen. Sorry. All my coloured pencils were in my apartment.)
Thosse numbers were for figuring out how to combine the different colours without any overlap
I decided on a colour-scheme (blue, because most of my bedclothes are blue which in turn is because appearantly I just like that colour in my room ;) ) and calculated and drew how much fabric I needed in each colour.
In case you were wondering why i wrote "drew"
Since I wanted my quilt to be usable for a variety of things ranging from "picnic-blanket" to "extra warmth in bed in winter" I wanted it to be washable and without any synthetics. I went to the gigantic fabric store in my town and got the batting, but they didn't have all that I wanted (colour you want - quality you want - quantity you want - choose two) despite being so gigantic. I guess my wishes were just too uncommon. (Come on, people: simple, unicoloured cotton in lengths longer than one meter? Who would ever buy such a thing? -.-) So in order to get the whole bunch of fabrics from one place to ensure their weight and drape and quality and what have you went well together, I ordered what I needed online. Aaaand forgot the backing, who would have thought. Luckily, my mother offered that I could use one of our (or my late grandmother's?) old tablecloths, since we never use them anyway. I found one that should fit both the colour-scheme and size, but have no idea what kind of a fabric it is. It is heavier and sturdier than the cotton, but, being a table cloth, should be washable. Also it would make the entire quilt/blanket more robust, so forgetting to order two metres of fabric might even turn out to be a blessing in disguise! (It's certainly the more environmental- and wallet-friendly version, recycling old table-cloths!)
I did (after washing and drying and letting it sit in my room for a week) manage to cut the pieces, here's what the actual thing will look like (kinda):
(without the border, or appliques, or topstitching...)
Now I'll have to sew them together, but i kinda dread the complicated looking cross section in the middle... ah well, it will be covered with the green square in any case, so If I mess it up, nobody'll know! :) Until I have the top part fully assembled, this will be a weekend-project for when I have a sewing machine. For the weekdays, I have two projects that I will talk about (and show pictures of) in another post:
Buttoned legwarmers (I adore legwarmers, but curse everytime I have to pull them on over shoes and jeans and whatnot)
A regency shift (I really don't want to sew underarm gussets with a sewing machine, so that will be a nice litte handsewing project.)
