Friday, January 29, 2010

What Have I Gotten In To?


It all starts with a brilliant idea and some wonderful inspiration, and then it is time to make your ideas come to life. I seem to have a lot of these moments, followed by a "what in the world did I get myself into now?" My first sewing project was a diaper bag for Hazel, sounded great...wasn't so great for a beginner sewer. Then I decided to learn how to refinish my kitchen table and chairs, another great idea...the table was easy, but then it was time to do all the spindles on the chairs...what was I thinking?!?!?! The latest bright idea came along when I got the new JCPenny Home Catalog in the mail a couple weeks ago. As I was flipping through the pages, and I came across a really cute hexagon quilt for a girls room which you can see here.

So naturally (as the light bulb clicks on in my head) I decide that I'm going to make one for Hazel for when she moves into her toddler bed here in the next 6 months or so. I bought the fabric that I had been dreaming of using for such a purpose, ordered the hexagon template, and began to cut out all my hexagons (a pain in the neck literally from staring down all day). So here are my pictures from so far.

1.) Cutting the fabric out of 11 fat quarters (18in x 22in fabric pieces)



Here are some of the fabric designs

2.) Since I don't have a pattern that I'm following, I just laid out the pieces until I was happy with the pattern. This took a few tries.

3.) Next, I sewed together the rows from left to right so I have 10 rows of hexagons. (Sorry I forgot to take a picture.)


By this time I was thinking that it was moving along fast and that if I really worked on it, I could have this quilt done by the end of next week. Well, reality hit me in the form of my MIL. I couldn't figure out how to attach two rows together so I took two of my rows over to my MIL to see if she had any words of wisdom to help me out. We went through some of her old quilting magazines to see if there was anything about hexagon quilts, there wasn't. So we hopped onto the Internet to see if there was any directions. There were. And they all said the same thing.............you have to sew the rows together by hand. *SIGH* So she showed me how to do a running stitch (where has this been hidden all my life??) and off I went. Below is a picture of the first two rows sewn together by hand and ironed out. Only eight more to go. When will I ever learn and not jump into a complex project the first time I try something? I'll post more pictures as it goes.

4 comments:

Jessica said...

Oh, I bet it's going to be so worth your efforts! It's already looking so good!! I absolutely love the materials you have picked out. Nice job! :)

Ali said...

Oh it looks like it is coming together beautifully! I used to be like that, just jump right in, but somewhere along the way I lost it. I wish I was like that again! I feel so boring lately.

I hope you enjoy finishing the quilt, it is so pretty and your little one with love it!

Gumbo Lily said...

You're doing a great job. Enjoy the process.

Jody

Melanie Schu said...

I love the idea of a hexagon quilt! What you have done looks great. Miss H is going to love her pretty, girly, quilt.