More Hexies

I did it again - I joined yet another swap. This time it is

{ Handsome } Hexies - THE SWAP

organized by Heather (a la mode fabric). The Pillow talk swap was so much fun, I thought I'ld do it again. My swap partner was none other than the Hexie Queen herself, Heather. The pressure was on...

So here are my hexies for Heather ~All Christmas themed as per her request...

And here are the ones I received from Brooke ~ aren't they cute? I love these. It was so fun to receive a little surprise package of hexies in the mail.

I guess I'll have to come up with a plan for these next...

In doing this I noticed a few things. I cut my one inch paper hexagons out of printer paper and basted onto those. Some people are using precut hexies from a couple of online vendors. The paper of the precuts is much thicker and therefore the finished hexies are much sturdier and crisper looking. Both types of paper work fine but if you want a really crisp looking hexie, you are probably better off buying the precuts. I am using them on my half inch hexies because I didn't want to cut out that many tiny hexies and the precuts look a lot nicer than my printer paper hexies. Plus the precuts are probably a bit more accurate in size than the hand cut ones.

Check out some swaps on flickr if you are interested in this sort of thing. They really are a ton of fun to participate in.
Happy Sewing!

Taking the Process pledge

About a week ago I took the Process pledge. This was started by Rossie and basically is a committment to include all the parts that go into making a quilt or quilted project in your blog instead of just showing the finished piece. The idea being that we can all learn from each others design processes. Often times the process ends up achieving something quite different than the original design idea. You can read more about the process pledge here.

So I took the pledge and I did show you quite a bit of the process that went into the PTS3 pillow but I couldn't quite tell you everything about that process because my swap partner still hadn't received her pillow and some of the process was a dead-giveaway. But now that she has happily received her pillow, I can say a few more words about that process and then show you the next project.

The PTS3 pillow was inspired primarily by this quilt in Ruth's inspiration mosaic. This amazing quilt was done by Jody of Because i'm me. I love how the colors in this quilt blend from one side to the other. Lately, I have been very interested in recreating the idea of color fade-in/out and fade from one color to another in my quilt projects. So when I saw this picture, I knew immediately what I wanted to do.

My mission was to create a piece of fabric that would achieve the same effect as this picture but there was one caveat. Since the final project was a pillow meaning that my size limit would be somewhere around 20 inches - I had to achieve the same quilt color fade effect in a very small area. That meant that the pieced squares would have to have a final size of around 1/2" in order to give me enough squares to produce an obvious color change. This was a bit of quilt piecing that I had never done before. The small-squares piecing approach using fusible interfacing made the entire process doable. I'm pretty sure I would never have gotten all those tiny squares to line up otherwise.

On to the next process.. Here is my current project

This the design plan for a hexagon pillow made with half inch hexagons. The idea was inspired by this photograph.

This is going to require around 400 hexies ~ my current count is around 360 so i'm getting there.

Hexie pile so far...

That's it for today - happy sewing!

PTS3 ~ The Evolution of a pillow

Partners were handed out for the 3rd Pillow Talk swap. A totally fun event whereupon you are given a partner (they don't know who you are) for whom you are to make a pillow according to their specifications (if any) and then you in turn receive a pillow from someone else (who you don't know) etc etc. This swap is run by the fabulous Heather (a la mode fabric) and the amazing Kerri (Sew dearly loved) and hosts a whole cast of amazingly talented quilters and sewists.

This whole process was a complete blast! I highly recommend it.

So after partners were handed out, it was time to do a little cyber-sleuthing/stalking? I had received my partner and checked them out from afar. Feels a little weird to be trying to figure out someone I don't even know. But stalking commenced, I checked their blog, checked their photostream on flickr, and tried to get an impression of their tastes. Then, I had some ideas ready to try out.

The Palette ~

My partner had specific requests, but also left it pretty open. Taking some inspiration from their mosaic I came up with this design. Influenced, by circles, colors, and modern art ~ cubism. This is my spin on all of those elements in pillow form.

The basic design ~ although the final version was a little different

I decided to do a specific grid of changing colors for the pieced fabric going from one color to another because I'm all about color fade-in and fade-out lately - I don't know why, I just am. It's a kick I'm on. I decided to try this out on paper first...

So I embarked upon an entirely nutty adventure in quilting. This is in part because I'm not really a quilter, I figure out a design first and then try to make it happen in fabric and I always try to do this just a little bit differently probably because I think of fabric more as a pliable construction material than anything else and I really like to make things challenging.

This time my endeavor involved using lots and lots and lots.....

of tiny squares of fabric. Over 1600 of them actually. Eventually when all was said and done, the squares ended up creating a 1/2 inch grid - yup, that would be where nutty came in, insane, deranged - pick your adjective.

Luckily, I remembered Elisabeth (Oh Fransson!'s) tutorial for Sew mama Sew on small squares piecing and that saved me. Phew!

The colors come together ~So, after this lovely mosaic was done, I then proceeded to cut it up again - yes you heard me correctly.

Tools of the trade ~

I followed this with a little circle piecing for the final design to emerge. The circle piecing was a little challenging because the pieced fabric was very thick and I paired it with Linen which has it's own challenges. I decided to beef up the linen with some lightweight interfacing and in the end, it came together pretty well. Add some straight line quilting and....

...it's done!

I hope you like it partner because it is coming your way. I'm a bit nervous about this actually because this design is really kind of out there, the colors are wild, it's beyond my comfort zone ~ but there you have it, the evolution of a pillow.

The pillow talk swap was totally a rad thing to do. Stretched my design ideas, got me thinking in a totally different direction than normal and made me realize just how pathetically boring most of our throw pillows are around here. Really, I need to do something about that next...

Happy sewing!