✨A woven yarn tapestry of the Shire✨
Any advice on getting started quilting by hand? I have a lot of fabric scraps I want to use but no idea where to begin
yes! the hexagon quilt I’ve been making is done with English paper piecing. I used these instructions from Ann Wood to get started.
The nice thing about EPP is that you need very minimal supplies and very basic handsewing skills to do it. As long as you have needle, thread, cloth and paper templates, you’re good. I made my templates out of graph paper, but you can buy precut ones or a paper punch to make your own. All you do is baste the fabric in place around the template, then whip-stitch the basted pieces together along the edges.
The only thing I did differently from the tutorial above -- and I will say it’s been helpful -- is that I got some washable purple glue sticks and used a dab of glue to secure my templates to the fabric before thread basting. This is not the same thing as ‘glue basting, which I found it to be too messy.
You can stick a baggie of basted hexagons in your purse and stitch them together whenever you want something to do with your hands. It’s great. And you aren’t limited to just hexagons -- there are a bunch of common shapes used for EPP, thought I haven’t tried them yet. And you can do some really cool things with fussy cutting.
Tokyo Quilt Festival
Hexagon quilt update: I had to move furniture to lay it out and stand on a chair to get it all in one shot. Currently in 6 horizontal strips, which will be joined together and filled in with half-hexies around the edges. Looks like the finished size will be around 80x90”.
Okay because the folks on the @sweater-cat2 poll were saying the responses weren't sufficient, let's expand those numbers a bit.
I'm going to define "skein" as "equivalent to a full skein even if it's made up of eight little yarn balls left over from various projects" so make an estimate based on that.
Sitting on the toilet in absolutely agony after two dozen atomic death hotwings, knitting for my fucking life.
Finished! Rose Window Stained Glass Crazy Mini Quilt. All hand sewn and hand embroidered. Thanks @cottonkhaleesi for the inspo and sending me some additional fabric! I think it’s about 1′ 9″ in diameter or so. No purchases made, all scrap and on hand materials including poly/cotton bias tape with a copyright date of 1983. Maybe not the best choice because it was leaving black dust on my hands while I was working with it. But oh well, it's done!
Absolutely stunning! Words cannot describe how gorgeous this is. I hope you feel incredibly accomplished because this is a work of art.
THE WIZARD CLOAK COAT IS FINALLY FINISHED!!!!
I feel like a dumbass, I am enlightened, and if I’m ever physically capable of sewing again, I am so doing this.
(use Neodymium magnets, guys. Might have to fight to pull them off the scissors afterwards but they won’t fall off while you’re cutting)
embroidery of some electric pylons on an old doiley
My quilt is finished! I think it took about 10 months, if I compress the time it took to find all the fabrics.
Edit: Thank you all so much for the kind comments, wow! I’m stunned by the numbers. I wish all your sweet comments in tags were just replies so everyone could see them, because y’all are so sweet (and funny).
oh wow
The top is finished! This Rainbow Swirl EPP quilt top is finished!! ~2500 hexies over a year and this is the result! Now to decide how to quilt it.
@ms-demeanor thought you might enjoy this
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE HEXIES SWIRL!
Oh that is so satisfying that's amazing holy shit
This clasped weft didn't quite come out like I wanted, I still like it.
Happy Hanukkah
@zmyaro please add yours
Chanukah sameach from a mobile dev who never throws away an old device!
Bringing my menorah quilt to the party.
Managed to get a little work done on my big weaving project today.
I’m about forty seven seconds away from saying “fuck it,” ignoring every single tutorial and how-to that i’ve seen on the subject, and starting a hexagon quilt with no plan or experience or tools aside from basic-ass hand-sewing equipment and One (1) stencil.
Irons and multiple hexagons and glue sticks are bourgeois extravagance.
(I’m going to make the worst quilt)
FOR THE RECORD I am already working on a DIFFERENT worst quilt.
So over the years I have had a variety of Funney T-Shirts because I shopped at Hot Topic in the late nineties and early two thousands (the first thing I ever owned from Hot Topic was a lucky 13 tee shirt that my parents got me when I was twelve because they were out with my sister and “found a store we thought you might like” and they were unfortunately correct) but also because I’ve done a bunch of weird shit in my life and people give you tee shirts for working at different stores or yearbook camps or hacker conferences. So I have all these tees that I am 100% not going to wear ever again but I don’t want to THROW THEM AWAY (both because they are cool and because my brain is broken and half of it is dedicated to the corvid shiny thing instinct).
But just a patchwork of tee shirts is? That’s been done. I’ve seen that. Sororities do that.
Bull shit.
So I’m slowly saving up the denim from every pair of jeans that I wear out and cutting them to pieces and stitching them together and when I’ve got WAY TOO MUCH OF THAT to be reasonable I’m going to start blanket stitching tee shirts to the front of it to make what is essentially an enormous patch jacket that will weigh forty pounds that nobody but me is ever going to want to sleep under and that is FINE. It’s going to get added to my collection of utterly reprehensible blankets.
If your multi-decade craft project doesn’t end up looking like a pair of crust pants what even is the point?
Kinda loving your whole vibe right now.
I just watched four origami videos about how to fold a hexagon out of a square (rulers? protractors? Fuck that), cut out three fucked up hexagons, got fed up, turned up the brightness on my screen, traced a regular hexagon from math.wikia.com, and then the only card stock I had handy was a card from my band so this whole thing is becoming a punk socialist mood.
baste
I made a mask out of space kitten fabric and it is horribly uncomfortable to wear and it’s currently three hundred miles away and I’m already planning on cutting the stitches out and making kitten eye hexagons.
Yeeeeeeee
Cut hexagons vs. Basted hexagons.
Someone asked how I am basting the hexagons, so this is it.
Progresssssssss
I only had half of a fat quarter of the kitten fabric and I am seriously considering trying to find more because I *ADORE* how awful it is. I bought it early in the pandemic because I had moved unexpectedly and didn’t have any of my stuff from home and needed to make some masks and it was literally the only fabric that was still in stock at the local WalMart.
I legitimately love the pink and yellow citrus print. The hot pink tigerstripe is left over from adding panels to one of my vests. The navy blue sharks are the sleeves of a shirt that only sort of fits me and honestly I love that so much I’m thinking about taking apart the rest of the shirt. The one with the blue background and white flowers is a totally different material than all of the rest and is probably a bad choice to use in a quilt but that’s all of it, that’s all I’ve got, all the hexagons are cut out of an 8″x8″ square. The bees are incredible and I have literally two yards of bee fabric. I wish I had fabric that was like the bee fabric but with a variety of spiders.
Anyway, I’m very happy with how it’s all coming together and I’m pleased that so many people find it engaging and creepy.
Progress and a creachur.
245 horrible hexagons so far.
Tiny Bastard continues to offer moral support and physical impedance.
For those who aren’t familiar, this is the horrible hexagon quilt so far. Doing 7 hexagons/1 piece a week will more than double the size of it, which is why that’s my goal. Since people are curious I guess I’ll do the unicorn ass piece first.
Horrible hexagon update. Phone for scale. This is all of the hexagons before my 1 piece a week goal. This is the unicorn ass piece:
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Go back. I’m interested in your extant collection of reprehensible blankets.
The main one is the Ugly Blanket, seen here underneath my dog:
It’s like 400 squares of the cheapest red heart supersaver yarn out there crocheted into squares that were then whipstitched into rows that were then whipstitched together into like 15 pounds of scratchy (but extremely warm!) acrylic. It started falling apart a bit so I crocheted a border around it. It was initially a scrap quilt, which is why it’s such a clashy combination of colors.
The Horrible Hexagons and the Denim Disaster are thus far theoretical utterly reprehensible blankets that I plan on making and owning eventually.
I also have a circular blanket that I call the Geode Blanket that is made out of mandela self-striping yarn and *I* don’t think that one is ugly, but some people utterly without taste do (my mother in law hates it).
I apparently haven’t taken a complete photo of this one, but it is now about six feet wide and lives on the back of my couch.
Vibes. I’m not good with numbers so anything that requires counting is right out, I just added a stitch when it seemed right, which is why the blanket is a bit frilly instead of perfectly circular (which is why my MiL hates it). Full blanket:
(Plus dog)