4 til 10 - Sept 2011

It's nearly time for my American holiday.  I'm very much looking forward to seeing the original hexagon star quilt and taking lots of photos to bring back to show Alison, my companion on this project.

Last week at our 4 til 10 evening we both brought all the blocks we'd completed so far and pinned them up on the wall to see the overall effect.  Wow they looked great!  Alison has more completed than me - maybe 2/3 of the blocks in the photos below.

We've set ourselves a goal to fill this board by the first 4 til 10 evening for 2012.

Alison with our hexagon star blocks.

Close up of the blocks pinned to the wall.

Back to 4 til 10

It's been quite a while since I updated this blog - mainly because it's been quite a while since I've sewn a stitch!  We've been so busy I haven't been to a monthly 4 til 10 evening for a few months.  I missed one when we were away, another when I was sick and last month there wasn't one due to there being a quilt and craft show in Melbourne (I didn't even have time to go!).

Well, tonight I'll get to catch up with the girls again.  I'm so much looking forward to it and I know it will provide renewed enthusiasm to work on my quilt rather than just work or renovation.

With only 6 weeks until my trip to the US - where I'll get to see the hexagon star quilt - I have good reason to stay focused on this project.

Four til ten - April

Last week we had our monthly 4-10 pm get together.  I've done very little work on my quilt projects since the month before.  We've been so busy!

I had some very welcome help cutting out dozens of the little half inch hexagons for my quilt.  I'll take a photo of the progress so far.

Four til ten - March

Thursday evening was our 4pm til 10pm sewing group.  I really look forward to it.  It's nice to enjoy the company of a group of women with a shared interest and to have a good period of un-interrupted sewing time.

Plus, I get to compare blocks with my "10 year project" companion, Alison. She was making a miniature of our hexagon star block - in 1/4" hexagons.  They were insanely tiny.

I so much enjoy choosing colours from my fabric stash that I've tended to make the coloured centres of the blocks and not made many of the neutral background hexagons.  I decided I'd spend the evening building up my stock of background hexagons.  It doesn't seem such a boring task when there's friendly banter going on.

American Pie - completed

I have finally completed the "American Pie" quilt for my young niece.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

I took this photo on my phone so it isn't the best.

A previous 10 year project

I've started a 10 year project once before!  It was one of the first things I started sewing.  I saw a hexagon quilt on a bed at Port Arthur, Tasmania, about 15 years ago and it stuck in my mind.  I had no idea how to go about it but found a hexagon shape on the internet and printed it and photocopied it .. again.. and again... and again.  I cut out hexagons and stitched them to my cut out papers.  Eventually I had a box full of them but no idea where to go with it next.

I stitched some into a couple of rings and joined the rings by an extra row of hexagons.  So now I had a few joined together rings with holes in the middle.  I asked advice from Corliss at Threadbear in Castlemaine and decided on the suggestion of a plain centre appliqued in.

It is almost complete - just a corner section to go plus a few centres to stitch.

Other works in progress

I much prefer hand stitching to sewing on a sewing machine.  Here are another couple of works in progress - all done by hand. 

First, a quilt for my 8 year old niece.  I had it machine quilted by Margaret at the Quilt Station in Elphinstone.  Now there is only the binding to stitch on.:

The pattern is called American Pie

While the quilt above was being machine quilted I started a quilt for niece #2 :

Don't know what this is called!

The ten year patchwork project

This is a project I started a year ago at my once a month quilt group.  I call it the Hexagon Star Quilt.

Alison, one of my fellow group members, and I saw this quilt in the book "Quilts of Virginia, 1607-1899" and fell in love with it.  It comprises approximately 25,000 hexagons and the original quilt is displayed on a bed at "Scotchtown" in Virginia, USA.

Quilt on the bed at Scotchtown

Close up of quilt

Alison and I excitedly began what we knew would be a very long term project.  These hexagons are small - the blurb beside the photo in the book says they are 1/2 inch hexagons.  When I first looked at the size of a half inch hexagon I faltered - it seemed insane to make a large quilt out of pieces so small.  But... carried along by the quilt group's enthusiasm I made a start.  Now I'm addicted!

Before Christmas I received a panicked email from Alison saying the hexagons we were using were too big!!  How could that be?!  Well, sometimes hexagons used in quilting are measured by the size of one of the six sides and sometimes they are measured across the entire hexagon.  There is a BIG difference.  The ones we are making are 1/2 inch along one of the six sides. We can't see the quilt in person and the pieces looked so ridiculously small it never occurred to us that they could be too big.

Alison and I held an emergency coffee meeting at my place and looked at her calculations.  If we made the exact same quilt it would be 5 metres long!  Hmmm... rather too large for our bed.  We are adapting the size to suit our respective beds (Alison is buying a bigger bed so she can make a bigger quilt!).  We decided to make one of the star blocks in the correct size hexagons and use it for a label on the back of our quilts. I'm going to write a message on the label explaining that this is the size pieces used in the original quilt.

The upside of our error is that I now only need to make 18,000 hexagons. What a bonus!

My first few blocks

The single hexagon has a paper of the correct size on top - much smaller!

The correct size hexagon isn't even the size of my thumb nail