I don’t prewash my fabrics, and I realize that I should expect some shrinkage when I eventually do wash a finished piece, but I wasn’t sure how much to expect.  So it was with a bit of dread that I washed my first large finished hexagon piece, which is a panel that I created to hang between the living room and hallway during the summer to keep the cold air in the living room and the dining room.  I call the piece “Room Divider Number One”. It will hang between the living room and the hallway.

In order to have a frame of reference for the shrinkage of future work made with hexagons, I took measurements before washing and drying the piece.  It was 36 inches wide and 90 inches long before laundering.  I washed and dried it using the gentle cycles on my home washing and drying machines.  After laundering, the piece measured 34 inches wide and 86 inches long.  This means that the piece shrank more width wise than length wise.  For every 18 inches of width I lost an inch due to shrinkage.  For every 22.5 inches of length I lost an inch due to shrinkage.

The piece shrank more than expected. I got really lucky because it exactly fits the width of the space where it needs to hang. In fact, there may be the slightest bit of gap between the piece and the wall when hung. If it had shrunk any more it would not be able to serve its purpose because it would have allowed cool air to pass along the sides. I might have had to cut it up to repurpose it.  That might have been an interesting exercise in modern quilting, but it would have been a bit tragic.

Since this is the first piece I have ever washed using hexagons I got to see the crinkly effect I can expect to see in the future when pieces such as this are washed.  I am a bit conflicted over the effect, and wonder how much is due to shrinkage of fabric, and how much is due to shrinkage of the cotton batting I used.  Below are images of the front and the back of the quilted piece.

In my previous quilting life, about 25 years ago, I pre washed my fabrics and used polyester batting exclusively.  Those quilts do not crinkle like this.  I probably should do some sample pieces to experiment a little and observe the results.

I call this piece “Room Divider Number Two”  It was created to hang between the dining room and the kitchen during the summer months when we have our window unit air conditioner installed in the dining room.  A similar unit “Room Divider Number One” was designed to hang between the dining room and the hallway.

Last week I decided to finish “Number Two” and spent two days quilting the five inch border strips and adding the binding.  The quilting on the border strips took approximately six hours to achieve, and the binding may have taken another six between the piecing, machine stitching to the front, and hand binding on the back.

I had allowed the panel to remain unfinished for about a month while I decided how to quilt the borders.  I had initially thought that I might use semi circles, but was unsure what to trace and what type of pen or pencil to use to do the drawing.  I finally decided to use tape as a guide to follow while doing my quilting.  I ended up creating a design of outward pointing arrows on the borders.

I really enjoyed quilting in a larger expanse of fabric as opposed to just making lines of quilting down the middle of rows of hexagons.  One thing I decided to do was to begin my threads and end them as well with knots at the edge of the borders where the binding would hide the knots.  It seemed easier to do that than to bury the ends elsewhere with quilting knots.

Above you can see the method that I used for marking my quilting on the borders.

Above you can see what the finished quilting looks like on the borders.

Binding provided more hours of handwork fun.

The final results were kitty approved, as usual.

I am storing my images on Flickr.  If you click on any of the links above you will be taken to my photo stream on Flickr where you can see more images related to this piece.

Last night I attended the Central Jersey chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild for the second  time.  I decided to join because I really enjoyed the company of this group of creative women, and I believe that getting out once a month to interact with others would be good for me.  I have my doubts about whether I fit in with the modern quilt movement due to my emphasis on handwork.  My work is more traditional than modern, but these people appear to be very inclusive, and I don’t think that my orientation will be much of a problem.  Besides, seeing what others are doing will help to ease me out of my comfort zone.

While filling out the form for membership I came upon a entry asking if I had a web page or a blog.  I thought, “Well, this really is the moment of truth, isn’t it?”  You see, I hadn’t been 100% dedicated to this domain name, nor to being hosted on WordPress.com.   I have a self hosted domain, which is my own name, plus I have a blog over on Blogger, called Enriching My Love of the Game, which I had maintained for a number of years related to a board game that I play.  I’d been thinking of changing the subject matter of that blog to include my quilting, or using my own name domain, terrischurter.com, which I have been saving for heaven knows what.  I even tried posting recently to that blog with an entry related to my quilting.  I’ll probably repost that entry here soon.

Looking at the names of blogs that pop up in the Quilting category in my Zite application installed on my iPad, I have noticed that the domain names run the gamut.  Some are clearly quilt related like Red Pepper Quilts and Fresh Lemons Quilts, though these names may not really mean anything.  Some blogs use the author’s name as the domain name, like Pat Sloan. I imagine that those people are famous enough to justify that.  Pat Sloan certainly is, but was this always so, or did these people grow into their fame as they blogged?  Some of the domains are clearly self hosted, which is a superior choice in terms of flexibility, but many are tied to services like WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, and the like.

All of these observations have left me feeling conflicted over how to proceed.  I paid for this domain, which I can carry with me if I ever leave WordPress, so I probably ought to stop procrastinating and start blogging with it in ernest.

So, last night when I filled out my membership  form I entered “hexylady.com” as my blog name.  I guess that commits me, at least for the short term.

During the meeting we were asked if anyone was interested in blogging.  One of the members said that they would be happy to meet with other members and help them get started with blogging.  I indicated my interest saying that I already have a blog, but that I haven’t done much with it.  When I mentioned the name “hexylady.com” someone in the group said that they had seen it, which surprised me.  Perhaps there is some other blog out there with a similar name. I have so few entries so far that it is hard to believe that anyone would have seen this blog or linked to it, especially since I haven’t categorized my entries, or promoted my blog in any way, but I suppose it is possible that the entries may be showing up on WordPress.

I know that The Central Jersey chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild has links to member blogs on their web page, so at some point in the near future this blog will probably be included there. That alone may be worth the price of membership.

You may recognize the color pallet from my header image.  After becoming enamored with hexagons I decided to create this piece to cover an area on my couch which had become worn over time.

I took the quilt out to Washington’s Crossing in September to get some images outside since I have enjoyed seeing the presentation of finished quilts in outdoor settings.

Following are a few of the other images I took that day:

There was a time in my life when I was at my heaviest that I wore the same dress over and over again.  It was made of 100% cotton.  It was a high waisted short sleeved summer dress, which functioned for about half the year for me.

When I lost nearly thirty pounds in 2006 I decided to retire these dresses, but I wanted to save the fabric for a “commemorative” quilt.  Mind you, I had not quilted in over twenty years, but I had high hopes that I would eventually get around to this project.  I didn’t just save the dresses.  I cut them apart and stored the fabric in a box, and filed it away on a shelf for future reference.  The colors include pastel green, yellow, pink, and orange.

The following year I retired.  I had all the time in the world on my hands, but I procrastinated.  I also regained those thirty pounds, and ended up missing the dresses, but that is another sad story.  I wasn’t sure about what to do with the fabric, and it hardly seemed right to “commemorate” losing the weight when it had found its way home again, so the fabric continued to sit on the shelf.  Luckily I did whip myself into shape and lose the weight again, so I was more in the mood to utilize the fabric if only I could motivate myself to get back into the quilting game.

When I recently reconnected with quilting through my love of hexagons I decided to cut up some of the fabric into 2.5″ x 2.5″ squares and make a few hexagons.  The fabric happens to be a twill, which is heavier than the usual quilt weight fabric, so I was disappointed with the way it handled when I tried to baste the hexagons.  Sewing them together gave bad results too, so the fabric has sat around for a bit longer.

I’ve decided that the best use of the fabric would probably be to make large solid colored squares and to quilt those squares individually by machine and then join them with a print lattice, or group of print lattices that are harmonious with the colors of the original fabric.

I may wait until the Spring lines come out before I attempt to pick compatible prints to accompany the solid fabrics.

This quilt is currently being used as a barrier to keep cold air from getting from the dining room to the kitchen.  We have another quilt hanging between the living room and the hallway for the same purpose.  I made that one myself over 25 years ago.

Notice that the lower right corner has been pinned back to serve as a clue to the cats on how to get past the barrier.  This side shown above faces the dining room.

 

 

The quilt was made using scraps to create flowers, which were appliquéd onto the surface of square white blocks which were then joined.  You can clearly see the seams showing where the blocks were joined.  The quilting design is simply crossed lines of quilting creating a grid.   This clearly is a quilt that was meant to be used.  I think I remember sunbathing on it in the backyard as a child with my mother.  She taught me at a young age how to broil myself, a habit which I unlearned in my young adulthood.  My face thanks me now.

The safety pins can’t be good for it, but when it came time to hang the quilts for the summer I couldn’t lay my hands on the T pins I had used last year, and I had to run out and buy some safety pins.

I am currently working on a panel specifically designed to hang at the location between the living room and the hallway.  After I finish that panel I will design a panel to hang between the kitchen and the dining room.

 

My paternal grandmother was a quilt maker. She was Pennsylvania Dutch, and actually still spoke a bit of the language. Her maiden name was Amanda Roth and she married my father’s father, Oscar Kriebel.  The picture above was taken of her when she was 19 years old.  Everyone always says that I look a lot like her. I remember playing under the quilting frame in her apartment as a child. She made all kinds of quilts. She did a lot of cross stitch. She also did appliqué, and patchwork. She belonged to a group of women at church called the “Golden Agers” who got together to quilt at the church. You had to be 50 years or older to be a member, and as I recall those women seemed really old to me. Now I’m ten years older than the entrance requirement, and I don’t feel old at all.

While I didn’t make my first quilt until six years after my grandmother died, I have to give her credit for sparking my interest in the first place. Grammy used to quilt with a frame, and I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way until I came across a quilt on the cover of the February 1974 issue of Family Circle. I’ll show that magazine cover,and the quilt I made from the pattern, in a future post. But first I’ll be showing some of the quilts that Grammy made.  She made many, and I am lucky enough to have a few of them.

Here is a picture that shows Grammy and me at about the same age.  I am 17 in my high school graduation photo, just two years younger than Grammy in her photo.  Do you see the resemblance?

Actually, I’ve been feeling hexy every day for a couple of months now. What I mean by that is that I have a strong desire to work with hexagons. Not long ago I discovered English Paper Piecing, a technique for joining fabric pieces to make quilts and other fabric objects.

As I have explored EPP I have developed a great love for hand stitching, and have started to follow some of the blogs in the quilting community in general. After documenting my progress for awhile I’ve decided that I might have enough to share with others to join that community. So here I go… with my own domain no less.

It’s my intention to spend a few posts discussing my entry into the quilting world nearly forty years ago, and my re entry more recently. I’ll share photos of my grandmother’s quilts, my own from a previous era, and work in process from the past couple months.

It is my hope that I can connect with others in the community and make a consistent contribution myself.