Anyway...
It all started with this:
I loved that tree in all it's hexie goodness. I had absolutely no history of sewing for decoration rather than pure function. I'd only previously (badly) cobbled together a corduroy handbag and some other slightly failed pieces. So I started looking around in my usual 'must research the hell out of this' fashion & came across this beauty from isisjem:
Wow...
It was completely different from all the other (nice but fairly conventional and traditional) hexie quilts, but in a really modern way that appealed to my arty background and slight obsession for the over-organised!
So plans evolved, like they do with too much time on your hands. I started basting up hexies with all the scraps of old projects, thinking I would probably be finished by Christmas... (it was October) only now in late June the following year, I'm nearly finished the top portion only... Slight under-estimation you may say.
Finding all the fabric and cheaply was getting to be a problem, so I hastily scoured John Lewis, eBay, curtain shops and the few slightly rubbish craft shops we have up here, getting my 10cm min sample strips (perfect for hexies) & got my work friends to bring in anything they may have lying about with a bribe of rhubarb from our garden or cake (& it worked).
I decided that I needed to go about this quite logically, only starting to sew my little treasures together once I had all I needed.
Aw, all the potential in neat little colour coordinated rows.
So I started...
Again I was quite logical about how I did this (although I have no idea why I started with the pinks rather than the whites...) I'd planned to have no more than 5 hexies in any one fabric (cheating if the fabric was multicoloured) I laid out my stripe on the floor so I could see if I had any close duplicates and jiggled them about until I was happy that they weren't in too much of a pattern & varied nicely along the way.
All the while I hadn't found the amazing fabric shop literally down the road from our cottage, it's like fabric nirvana for a fabric crazed person :) It's really like a drug den to my addiction, forcing a big breath in everytime I walk in & feeling my credit cards quickly running away from me!
Anyway...
So the strips went on, sewing in my lunchtime & evenings, even on my 20 minute bus ride home, although I did get alot of dodgy looks from other commuters so stopped that quite quickly.
I'd even made a rice heat bag for a friend of mine due for a long bout of hospital treatment with fabric she donated (& had heaps of memories for her) yes it's rainbowised too... Can't stop myself...
Completing that was a bit daunting, knowing I'll have a giant version of that later on. But it definitely helped me get a better idea of what the hexies look all together on something as a new fabric themselves rather than just stripped up and basted. Although it was quite wonky, I was still proud of it and everso slightly reluctant to give it away! But it was definitely made for a good cause, so off it went. The look on her face & the massive hug I got were more than enough in return, aw :)
Suddenly I had created this monster!
And it was getting quite difficult to work with when getting the new strips on, but with a careful bit of folding it sat on my lap nicely while I worked. (& snoozed a couple of times)
Now I'm nearly finished this bit, I have half of the last black strip to put on. Think I'll miss all the hexies and stripping them together, but really looking forward to having the finished product eventually.
I'm going to do the quilting around the hexies in big flowers with a hexie edge similar to badskirt's:
She's got some seriously good tutorials and tips for starting paper pieced hexagons too, well worth a look (click the pic)
Ok, mini lecture over. I need to get up and on with my third to last day off before I go back to work... Why am I awake and writing this time of day...
Bye!!
X
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