The many hexagons I have already basted...
I am prone to dream a little…seems like everyone likes to dream a little…but I think I dream a lot. A lot too much maybe? Sometimes I do dream so much that it’s difficult to remember what it is I want to be/do/see today, by lunchtime I’ve already thought of the four cushion covers I want to make, the 10 different designs for car
ds that I’ll never make (or send) and a multitude of options for what to cook for dinner/this week/this year. It’s exhausting to say the least. So in this new blog, my first ever blog (argh, no idea what I’m doing), I’m going to try and catalogue some of these dreams/ideas/thoughts, perhaps pin them down, and share with you my attempts to achieve just a small portion of them, because dreaming a lot needs a bigger brain than I possess!
So one day, six months ago I had a dream to create a beautiful quilt like never seen before, you know the kind you see in magazines and in Cath Kidston catalogues? The ones that you can’t afford and will never own? I wanted mine to be like them but even better. Whilst I’m good at dreaming big I’m not good at DOING any of it, however, unlike many of my previous and subsequent dreams I have actually worked to make this one happen and it’s looking like I might actually produce a finished product!!!
It all started when my Granma gave me some of her old sewing stuff and I found some intriguing paper hexagons amongst the array of materials. I had to guess at their use as she seems to have forgotten ever sewing despite making me most of my clothes when I was a child – old age does not look fun! Anyway, as a needlework teacher far far back in the 60s she’d obviously got some students to start making paper pieced hexagons to sew into a quilt – some were a lot better made than others though! So from this I decided to try my hand at making a paper pieced hexagon quilt of my own using 1 1/2 inch hexagons and a variety of fabrics that mean something to me – pieces my Granma made clothes out of, old fabric my Mum has and so on including some lovely fabrics from by beloved eBay. But I wasn’t going to start small, no way, this wasn’t to be any old quilt, I wanted to make a king size one – idiot indeed – I have NO idea about quilting but the dream was born…Hand quilting takes a LONG time but I’ve found it so rewarding despite the constant stabbing of my fingers and strained eyes from trying to stitch so small. Only ever attempt this if you are 5 parts crazy though I think, I started back in April when I worked out I had some 3600 hexagons to HAND baste and HAND stitch together. All the planning was done using information found on the web, there are some great sites on quilting and great tutorials on paper piecing if you’re ever crazy enough.
The quilt is still about half the size it needs to be but I’m thinking I could let the dream slip a little and maybe it could just sit across the end of our bed, not cover the whole thing, and maybe I’ll let myself off doing it king size…hmmmm! However, now the end of stitching is near I’m panicking about having to quilt it, I’ve bought some padding and a backing fabric but the idea scares me! Have you ever put so much effort into something and then panicked that it’s going to be ruined before you’ve finished? However I want this dream to come to fruition so I’m just going to have to man it up and see what happens…looks like I’m going to have to hand quilt it though as I can’t find the right foot for my sewing machine…this just gets better and better. Repeat to self: I will finish something, I WILL FINISH SOMETHING!
