Hexagons and Wonky Log Cabins

I was looking through my Craftsy BOM block photos last night and realised that I hadn't taken any photos of my completed April & May blocks! (Or my June blocks, but I haven't even started those yet!)

So without further ado, may I present:

April Block #1 - Hexy Stripe

I very much enjoyed the Hexy Stripe block - I wish I'd thought to do what Phillipa did with hers and place the hexies on the diagonal so that I didn't have to cut any up! Infact, I enjoyed it so much that it served as inspiration for my QCA Handmade Swap project that I have under way at the moment.. more details about that another time, though (it's a secret!)

April Block #2 - Sunny with a Chance of Hex

This block was *so* easy.. I can't imagine anyone being intimidated by hexagons after trying this block.. hardly any whipstitching, and if you're as lazy as I am you will have used your sewing machine to applique them onto the background! Perfect for a beginner.. really! If you've never tried hexies, don't be afraid!

May Block #1 - Framed Wonky Log Cabin

I *really* love how this block turned out! I confess to having fussy cut the centre squares for both of the May blocks, and I'm so glad I did. This is one of my favourite blocks so far, and I'd certainly use it again on another quilt. (This rather surprised me as I'm not really a super modern kind of girl.. or am I?) 

May Block #2 - 5 Sided Wonky Log Cabin

I really hated constructing this block.. the whole time I was bitching to Phillipa about how it looked crap and I didn't think it was going to turn out AT ALL. Clearly I was wrong, because now that it's finished I think it looks kind of awesome. I made the conscious decision halfway through to put the centre block en pointe and I think that made all the difference. If I ever made this block again though, I would start with a 5 sided centre block instead of a square.

I'm so happy with my fabric choice too - Delighted (by The Quilted Fish for Riley Blake) has such a great range in the colour palette which has given me so much flexibility in my blocks. I think my favourites are definitely the pinks, blues and greens... but the reds and yellows are striking too.

And now to do those June blocks...

May Bee Blocks

 I know it's not even May yet, but I've totally completed my May block already! This month it was Phillipa's turn, so I helped her road test her design. She has blogged the instructions over at our blog Needles in the Haystack.

We pre cut all the heart shapes using Flo the Accuquilt GO! and used SewCalGal's "mock needle turn applique" technique.

My attempt at thread painting!

I think the block turned out beautifully, and I'd definitely use the mock needle turn applique technique again!

Hedwig the Owl (Part 2 - Thursday)

After dropping Bean off at school, Blossom and I went over to my MIL's so that I could finish off my owls. But before I could start sewing, Blossom wanted to go and say good morning to the chookies and see if there were any eggs to collect.

Good morning, girls!

Blossom proudly showing off her haul.

With the "chores" out of the way I was free to finish sewing the rest of my base blocks together and then press them.

The rest of the blocks ready to be pressed

Blossom playing photographer

She's only as tall as the ironing board, can you tell?

Halfway there!

 The morning was mostly spent alternating between the sewing machine and the ironing board, sewing and pressing until.....

Four completed owls! (Well, minus the appliqued eyes)

 Then it was time to give Flo some attention and cut some felt for the eyes. I used the 1" and the 1/2" circles on my Rose of Sharon die. I wasn't sure what colour to do the eyes, so I cut a pair out of each colour that I had and then took a poll. Blossom voted for blue. My husband voted for blue. My girlfriend Linda voted for blue. The blues have it. I also kind of liked the brown, but the blue matches the background fabric nicely. The yellow and the orange are just plain demonic... but would be a great idea for monster eyes (on a different quilt).

Eenie, Meanie, Miney, Mo.. my mother said to pick this one.. Blue!

So this afternoon I went to my local quilt shop to buy some Vliesofix to put on my owl eyes (yes, I realise this is backwards - I should have done that BEFORE cutting) and tomorrow morning (or is that today, seeing as it's 1:45am?) I will attach the eyes to the blocks, although I might just do the white bits for now and wait until I've sorted out the rest of the layout before I commit to a direction for the owls to be "looking"... or maybe I'll just decide to have them looking straight ahead because an owl with half an eye is just plain weird.

Taking shape..

We went over to my MIL's last night for dinner, so after dessert I snuck off into my craft room to play with Flo (the Accuquilt GO!). During my excursion to Spotlight last Friday (previously referred to in my post on Needles in the Haystack) I found some textured white cotton fabric that looked perfect (if a little thin) to make my Hedwig owls out of (for Bean's Harry Potter quilt). 

I decided that if I added some interfacing to make it a little heavier, it would be perfect, and easier to manage than trying to double the layers for thickness. So I estimated the amount of fabric I'd need to use for Flo to cut all the pieces, cut a piece of interfacing to match and then ironed it before putting Flo through her paces.

All my Hedwig pieces cut out

 Two rolls through later, all my pieces were cut! And then I looked at my scraps and thought "I really should save the pieces that could go through the GO! again"... I trimmed them into pieces and popped them into a zip-lock bag for use at some other time. I impressed myself with my thriftiness.. pieces that I normally wouldn't have kept because they were too small for anything useful are now completely perfect for things like my Rose of Sharon die!

Left: To keep. Right: To ditch.

Then it was time to find some fabric from amongst my HP "coordinating" fabric squares to surround and finish off my little Hedwig blocks. Because I'm making 4x Hedwigs, one for each corner of the quilt I was hoping that I would have enough of one type of fabric to do them all. Sadly, I was ONE SQUARE short of being able to do it all in the sparkly dark blue fabric. But never mind, I can do two in dark sparkly blue and two in medium sparkly blue.

Blue sparkly squares waiting to be cut

And now all my blocks for Hedwig are cut! Look at me GO!

 I must say that I was super impressed by how little time it took me to cut my fabric.. I spent more time trying to work out which contrasting fabrics to use (I had other fabric choices aside from the plain blue sparkly, but I thought they might detract from Hedwig and that just wouldn't do!) than I did cutting them. Then I cut 4x 1" squares from orange fabric (from offcuts that Phillipa cut for me.. same fabric as the top shown on Needles in the Haystack) for the beaks and laid out all my fabric pieces so I could get a mental image of how she would look.

Hedwig with all her pieces (unassembled, obviously!)

Flo with her seatbelt on, ready for her first playdate!

Then today was Stitch 'n' Bitch Tuesday, so I took my crochet over to Kym's only to have the girls ask me if I'd bought Flo with me.. which I had not. So off I went to pick up Flo, a die or two and some fabric scraps so I could demonstrate her to the girls. They were impressed by her portable size - they'd envisaged something much bigger.. and were absolutely floored when I popped a few scraps onto my Rose of Sharon die, ran it through and then showed them all the flowers and leaves I'd cut in the space of 25 seconds. I forgot to take a photo of my scrappy flowers though! (And once again, I went through all the scraps and cut the small RoS circles out of the pieces that were large enough so that I minimised my waste! I'll have to find something to use all those flowers, leaves and circles on eventually)

Pinning the curves

After pinning my first piece of Hedwig together (below) it occurred to me that perhaps I should practice sewing the curves on some of my spare pieces, so one of my girlfriends, Nici, picked out two of my spare pieces (white & yellow, above) to be my test block.

One of Hedwig's heads (pinned) 

Looks like an egg, yes? Or maybe a birdie beak?

 I thought the white and yellow together looked like eggs, sunny side up. Nici saw a seagull. So then I "made" her a seagull by playing around with the block layout..

Head, beak, body, wings on the sides.. imagine two embroidered feet at the bottom

 Silly, I know.. but we had fun! And then sadly it was time to go to playgroup so we had to put aside our crafty projects, pack up and take the kiddies for *their* playdate!

Tomorrow is my local quilting friendship day, and I'm planning to go along (for the first time in about 3.5 years!) but I'm not sure what to take with me. I don't have enough pins (and it won't take all day just to pin) to sit and pin all my Hedwig pieces together, but I could pack up my sewing machine and take that with me and do pretty much what I used to do at the friendship day - sit in the corner on my sewing machine and not really talking to anyone else because I need to be near a power point!

If my tumbler die was here I could take Flo along and do double duty.. demonstrating how cool the GO! is to the girls at the friendship day, AND cut all my Harry Potter fabric squares into tumbler pieces. But I can't do that.. and I'm not sure yet what I'm doing to do with my other bits of fabric until I've seen how the tumbler pieces go together. (I really should get my husband to help me mock up an image of my quilt so that I can work it out properly instead of winging it!)

So what to take?? Maybe I could not take any quilting and take my apron fabric & pattern and cut that out instead. OR WAIT! I have it! I was going to wait for my strip cutter to come along so that I could do my Christmas table runner... but I could just use my value die to cut out my squares. And so, apparently tomorrow is the day that the Christmas table runner pattern that I bought at the friendship group 4 years ago will finally go from being a pattern to a project in progress. There we go.

All Systems are GO!

The Accuquilt GO! Fabric Cutter

Guess what!? I ordered an Accuquilt GO! from Cutting Art today! I've been wanting one for months... and was half hoping that my husband might order me one for my birthday (in July), but no such luck. It wasn't until I 'threatened' to buy from the US via eBay that my husband realised that I was serious and agreed that I could order one as an early Christmas present. It then took another month or so to *actually* get him to agree that I could order it *right now*.

Incase you don't know what an Accuquilt GO! is, it's basically a die cutter (think Sizzix, Cuttlebug etc) that cuts fabric. How cool is that?

Ever since my husband and I finally got married (after 11 years and 2 children together!) in April, I've been thinking about making a 'marriage quilt' to commemorate our wedding. I did a bit of research and some thinking about what I actually wanted it to look like, and I settled on the traditional Double Wedding Ring design, incorporating the Rose of Sharon. I'm thinking that I'll do more of a medallion style quilt instead of having the DWR all over the quilt - partly because I've never sewed curved patchwork pieces before. While reading some issues of Australian Patchwork & Quilting (and similar) I saw an ad for the Accuquilt GO! and so I went hunting online to find out more about it.. and well, once I saw that they had dies for the DWR & the Rose of Sharon, fate was sealed!

Now it will only take me a short eternity to make the marriage quilt, as opposed to the long eternity it would have taken without the GO!.

Having said that, my first project is NOT going to be the marriage quilt, it's going to be my son's Christmas present.. Bean is 5 years old and absolutely Harry Potter mad. We're reading the books (halfway through book #4 atm) and it's all he and Blossom (3 and a half years old) ever talk about. It's been 4 years since I made his quilt, and so I thought it might be time to upgrade from his baby (cot doona size) quilt to a full size single bed quilt. I thought "Hey, surely there must be Harry Potter fabric.. I should do a google search" and found that yes, there is... it's just hard to get because it's been out of print for nearly 10 years! So I *did* purchase some through eBay in the US, precut into ~4" squares (left over from other projects, I gather) and combined with some co-ordinating non-Harry Potter fabric.

August Wind Quilt Designs - "Split Drunkard's Path"

Given the fabric is already in 4" squares I'm kind of limited by what I can do with it (aside from leaving it as squares) so I've been looking online for inspiration. The first thing that caught my eye was the Accuquilt Blazing Star die (because I was so busy browsing their website) and I also searched some other blazing star style blocks that use diamonds, but neither of the Accuquilt dies will suit my 4" squares. Back to the drawing board. What about a 'chisel' star? Nope, still too big. And then I found it. While googling "Drunkard's Path" (I don't even remember why - it could have been because of the super-cute owl tutorial on The Tulip Patch blog) I discovered a design by August Wind Quilt Designs that *looks* like stars, but is actually made by halving drunkard's path blocks!

And even better, Accuquilt has a 3.5" Drunkard's Path die, which should fit perfectly with my 4" squares - yay! But wait, there's still more! Cutting Art was having a 30% off sale on selected Accuquilt dies, so I was able to pick up the DWR die on sale, and I was tempted into also purchasing the baby 2.5" strip cutter (I mean really, how could I not? Not with all those metres of binding in my future!) on sale and then because I just couldn't help myself I indulged and bought the Sunbonnet Sue and the 3.5" Tumbler dies on sale too (as well as the Rose of Sharon & Drunkard's Path which were not on sale). So I have lots of cutting fun coming my way! I can't wait!