Some hexies and a minor miracle

I am handing in the completed first draft of my thesis on Monday. That possibly could be the 'minor miracle' but we wont do any counting of chickens at this stage. There are many hours left until Monday arrives and quite a few more words to be written.

No, the minor miracle is the arrival of this box:

Possibly only those of us living at the far-flung ends of the earth will understand why I am referring to this as a minor miracle. Take a look at what it cost me:

$3.95 to ship a box from the US. Not the standard eleventy million dollars that it costs for an envelope of fabric. Perhaps Fabric.com made a mistake - I'm not asking. Mel used this batting in a lovely quilt she brought along to Monday Modern - it seemed very soft and squishy and I decided I wanted to use it in a winter- tv-watching quilt I have in mind. It will be a quilt all about tactile appeal rather than colour or design.

Very little sewing to report otherwise (see, no need to worry June, I have been very focused on my writing!) - just the odd hexie in the evening when my brain refuses to function any longer. It's raining today so the colours look a bit dull here, but in real life they are very pretty and make me smile.

I {heart} Tula Pink

Indeed I do. I had some birthday money tucked away for a rainy day and because I am a sucker for nicely packaged 'craft' kits and nearly everything Tula Pink, I could not resist.

What's inside?

Hexy joy.

Cameo Carnival

I'm really enjoying puttering along with my EPP. Now that I have made the 'pattern' I'm trying to decide what to do to square it up because I have decided to make this into a cushion.  I'm not sure I love the idea of trying to applique it onto a base fabric (not a lot of faith in my ability to do this neatly) so I'm thinking of filling in around the pattern with more dark blue pieces until it is big enough for me to square off. Is there an option 'C' I haven't thought of?

Quilting

I have started quilting my quilt 'Peaks'. I decided to try some 505 basting spray which I haven't used before - mostly as practice because I want to quilt some voile fabric. I'm not sure how readily available this spray is in NZ - I got this can from Helen but sadly her shop is closing. For any local readers Fabricland in Papakura stock it at the moment.

 It's really good! I basted the quilt on my cousin's large wooden kitchen floor. As far as I could tell, not too much overspray stickiness but as I haven't had to live with the kitchen floor post-basting I can't absolutely guarantee 'no mess'. Hopefully if there was a mess the children got the blame ;-)
I pin basted as well - I don't mind pinning at all and this quilt is quite big so I did it to be on the safe side.  I think on a smaller quilt you could get away without pinning at all.

I also finished up Mel's bee block - a pod. Her blocks will look amazing when they are all together - pods seem to be all the rage at the moment.

'Trees please'

Karyn asked for tree blocks for her Monday Modern block. She was very minimalist with instructions - a tree or trees in a 12.5" block. I'm  hopeless at improvising so I looked around and found a cute little paper piecing pattern here.

I love the Echino fabric she gave us - I couldn't resist sneaking in a bit of the purple from the selvedge - it is such a lovely colour.

English Paper Piecing

I have been working on my not-so-secret quilt slowly but surely - but as I am just five weeks away from handing in the first draft of my completed thesis (gulp), time at the sewing machine is limited. Here is a sneak peek.

I have been admiring various EPP projects for ages now. Karyn's hexies, Katy's Spring Carnival cushion and also this latest project she is working on. I really like hand stitching so figured some EPP would be a great way to unwind in the evenings. I decided on making Katy's Spring Carnival cushion, because she has a great tutorial available and you can print out all the paper pieces. I made the first block with paper from my printer but it is hard to get nice firm edges and with the different shapes I find the pieces need to be really accurate. I decided to buy some online (too lazy and pushed for time to buy thicker paper and fluff around cutting them out). I'm really happy with these papers -they are firm and work well with the glue, and they seemed to find their way to NZ very quickly.

{Super secret} Progress

Remember these solids I showed you last time in their strip pieced blocks?

This is what happens to them next. No doubt experienced quilters know about this technique for making triangles quickly, but for me it was a revelation!

First you stitch a solid piece of fabric top and bottom to these blocks like so:

Then you cut your triangles to size aligning the bottom of the ruler at whatever measurement you are using to the bottom of your fabric. When you cut the top, you trim just a little below your stitch line so that the triangle pieces come apart at the top.

And hey presto! Triangles in pairs. I guess this only works if you are using the same solid between your triangles, but it beats painstakingly stitching pairs together one by one like I did with my Tradewinds quilt!