Quilting for newbies (Part 1)

When I say "newbies" I mean totally virgin to the idea of actually making a quilt, let alone going ahead and doing it. So, what on earth was I thinking?

Well, I saw these:

From the a Stitch in Dye Blog (oh the amazing and beautiful quilts she makes). I love how they are scattered across the farm when she photographs them. I also love how the binding of this quilt conforms to the design.

And this one! Adorable! From Whipup.net. She also makes amazing and crafty quilts. I could spend all day drooling.

And this little pretty from http://www.dreamalittledreamalot.wordpress.com/. I particularly love the quliting design overlaping the piecing.

Then I thought: if they can do it so can I! (stupidly overambitious, I know.) I was off to the races. Or sewing machine. So, I bought into the idea of a hexagon quilt (a hexie for short) and began my blind, winding, ridiculous journey.

First up was figuring out how ambitious I was really going to be by defining the size of the quilt. You can find out how to size a quilt and figure out how many hexagons you need here. I chose to use 2 inch hexagons (which in hind sight was one more too big bite of quilting, but now we are in it 2 feet deep, so whatever, I just keep on).

Then was maybe the most fun and exciting part- shopping for the fabrics. It turns out I love fabric. A lot. I saw so many fabrics that I wanted to buy just because they were beautiful. I had no earthly idea how I was actually going to use them, but they seemed to be calling my name is sweet whispers "I was made for you...., buy me....etc.". I settled on fabrics that brought out the theme of Owen's room that had browns, oranges, turquoises, aquas, greens and ivories. I placed those little pretties in my cart and took them home craddled like babies. Welcome to our home my pretties.....

Once I had loads of fabric I had to figure out if I was going to go the traditional route and baste these little hellish hexies. Hexagon quilts are hard, so hard that people think its EASIER to just hand sew them. Bwah.
I was so dead in the water.

But I was in the middle now, so I might as well swim to the other side rather than go back.

As it turns out, there aren't a ton of tutorials on how to machine sew hexagon quilts, but I was pretty desperate to do so. I couldn't imagine hand sewing the whole thing. So I search and search until I came across this lovely guide on the worlds best how-to resource: You Tube.

Basically, here's where I am headed.

So, thats a bit of where I hope to end up.

But, I'm still way back at the beginning.
Once I figured out how to get the fabrics together, I had to come up with a design. This took awhile because I had to figure out how to make a template. I ended up printing about a million tiny hexies on paper and then coding my fabrics 1-20 or so.

You can see that I put in a design in the middle with "hexie flowers" as they are called in the world of quilting. After settling on a design with my colors it was time to start cutting and basting hexagons.  To cut the hellish hexies I had Drew print me some 2 inch templates and cut them out of card stock. Hexagons are tricky because they can't be off at all if they are going to fit together perfectly. So when I cut them out, I had to be very very careful to make sure that they assembled with perfect seams.

It was later that I learned that this was all for naught.
But Anyway....

I cut out my PERFECT templates and then read that each hexagon needs to have a quarter inch of extra fabric on each side that is ironed down to make a perfect hexie with PERFECT seams. So, its actually the SEAMS that have to be perfect. Live and learn I guess.

Before I went on a crazy endeavor to cut out 400 or something individual hexagons, I had Drew cut out a template out of plexiglass. Then with the magic of the Olfa cutter, I cut cut cut cut cut until my knuckles bled. Okay, so they didn't really bleed, but I did end up doing most of it in the two weeks after Owen was born because I didn't get to it before I went into labor, and at that point I was delusional and thought I'd actually finish this quilt in Owen's first few months. He's 15 months now, and I'm still not done.

Here is the plexiglass template and the little hexies. You'll notice that they aren't fabric. Thats because to get the even seam around hexagons for later sewing you have to baste them. Some people use basting paper, and hand stick the fabric to the paper for each individual hexie, but I chose the cheater's version of using freezer paper. So, these templates were cut from my PERFECT smaller hexagons out of freezer paper. They'll go on the inside of the hexagons and hold the edges down. You can see below the full size fabric hexagon cut out, and the freezer paper on the inside. I ironed each hexie so that the waxy freezer paper adhered to the edges of the fabric to hold down the perfect corners. Then, voila! Flip it over and there is the perfect little hexagon.

400 or some hexies later here they are, ready for assembly. Its been a long grueling road on learning how to get them together, but they are so beautiful to me that its all seems worth the trouble now. I like to just look at them like they are my pet pretties.

 All of this work cumulates in the final top quilt. I can't wait to get that part done, but I haven't started sewing yet. Its on my list. I'll update the second part once I actually get the top quilt done. Once its completed I'll farm it out for binding and sewing in the quilt layers to the professionals and then finally, I'll have my first quilt.

What was I thinking?
But now that I'm here, I can't wait to see how it turns out once I start sewing.