Charming Hexagon Pillow

Hello Everyone    I didn't mean to be away so long, but I've been busy!

I try to be loyal to my readers, and I know that I had said that I would post a tutorial for the hexagon pillow that you see in the photos below.  In the meantime, the owners of Back Door Quilts saw my pillow at English Paper Piecing addiction group last week and asked if I'd write my pattern.  As a result, I have self published the pattern, and they have bought several copies to sell in their shop and at quilt shows.  I've also opened an Etsy shop where you can buy the pattern as an instant download. Here is the link  LuAnnsLooseThreads Etsy Shop

I will also be teaching a class on this pillow at Back Door on September 21.

                                                                              

Charming Hexagon Pillow

14” X 14”

   

I don't feel that it's fair to those that have purchased the pattern that I post an entire tutorial here.  I hope that you understand.

I will give you some limited directions though.

The pillow measures 14" X 14"
The hexagons are 1" and are NOT raw edge.
I have used mini charm packs and/or 2 1/2" squares of fabric from my stash to cover the hexagons. Then they are machine stitched to the background grid.  There is no hand sewing on this pillow.

These pillows are pretty addictive as you can see from my photo and are a great use for all of those mini charm packs that we've all bought because they were cute but didn't really have a plan for them.


I have several of these pillows in progress and will post them in a couple of days.

                           

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.  

Patriotic Pillows on the Porch

The last couple of weeks, I've been making red, white and blue pillows to decorate our porch for our July 4th holiday barbecue.  The weather here is rainy and cool, but we managed to cook a few hamburgers and hot dogs yesterday in between showers.



This pillow-making frenzy all started with the pillow below.  When I went to English Paper Piecing Addiction Group at Back Door Quilts a couple of weeks ago, my friend Michele brought a pillow in similar to this.  It is made of 2 1/2" unfinished squares and is quilted by hand with big stitch using embroidery floss.  I know a lot of us have floss left over from our cross stitch days.  I've seen lots of pillows using the 2 1/2" squares, but the big stitch made each square puff up a bit, and the hand work was fun to do while sitting out on the porch.  Back Door made up kits for both the stand alone pillow tops and another kit with the backing added.  I bought a couple of kits for the pillow top to get a variety of squares and then added to it from my patriotic fabric stash.  

I saw this hexagon pillow on Pinterest and decided I'd make one.  I found a tutorial on line that said to arrange your hexagons in a pleasing manner.  Well, that's all well and good, but they have to line up so that when you sew both horizontally and through the diagonal you catch all of the points.  I'm writing a tutorial and taking photos, and I'll post it in a few days.  This is a great way to have a hexagon pillow without sewing all of the hexies together by hand.

Here is another hexagon pillow that I designed.  There is no sewing by hand on this pillow either.  The flag would have shown better if I'd bordered it and used a larger pillow insert, but I think you can still tell what it is.

This is what I did with the second kit of 2 1/2" squares of Patriotic fabric.  I stitched in the ditch on this one.   I've quilted all of these pillows using some of my batting scraps and then muslin on back.  I think the quilting just makes the pillow more sturdy and gives it a nicer finish.   They are all finished off with an envelope back.  I'll do a tutorial on that at some point as well.  

I embroidered the center of the pillow above.  I took an embroidery class at Back Door a couple of months ago to learn some new stitches and to learn the correct way of doing some that I'd done for years.  The added bonus was when I learned how to shade my embroidery with crayons.  I'll have to post about that as well.

Below is my quilt as you go Patriotic table topper centerpiece made from my tutorial.  You can find it here.  

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

Happy Independence Day!

Shipshewana Quilt Festival

Yesterday I drove north to Shipshewana, Indiana, along with two friends from our Thursday sewing group, to the annual quilt festival.  I go to Shipshewana a few times a year, but this was the first time I had been there during the quilt show.  It was wonderful, and I always enjoy my visit there.  It was so nice to visit with so many friends there that I hadn't seen in a long time.  I had a great time.  

I'm going to share just a few quilts from the show.  Some are prize winners, and others are just some that I really liked.

This first one is the Best of Show by Nancy Prince, On This Winter Day.   I neglected to get a close up photo of the info above the ribbon, but it took her 7 years to complete the quilt, and I believe there is something like 7,000+ yards of thread in it.  A lot of the things were heavily thread painted.  It was really an awesome quilt to see in person.

Here is a close up of one of the houses on the quilt.  Look at the people in the windows!

Here's another house with a close up of the machine quilting.  

I neglected to get the name of the maker on this quilt, but it was my favorite.  The flowers in the baskets are all dimensional and embellished with embroidery.   Since there was no ribbon awarded, I don't have the makers name on the winner's list either.  

This quilt is by Sandra Peterson, Bohemian II:  Ferris Wheels and Kites.  Third place in the large pieced category.

This quilt is by Janet Stone and is called No L.  She won 2nd place in the mixed media-large category.

The rest of the quilts have photos of the info cards with them.  This one has 1,573 pieces.  The logs were very narrow.  

This pattern is called Insanity, and it appeared on the front cover of Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine Volume 16 Number 6.  I bought that magazine just in case I ever get the urge to make this quilt.  Once in awhile I pull the magazine out just to look at the large, colored photo of this quilt.  10,509 half inch hexagons.  I'll probably just keep looking at the nice photo.

I've made several baskets that look similar to the ones in this quilt.  I've added mine to an applique' center on point a bit like this arrangement and am working on English Paper Piecing an outer border for it.  I like this quilt.  The center applique' is made of wool.

This quilt is just striking.  There is lots of tough piecing in this one.  

Here is another neat log cabin arrangement with tiny logs.  The machine quilting looked just like hand quilting.  It was done on a Baby Lock Sashiko machine.

There is a car museum adjoining the conference center where the quilt show and vendors were.  Most all of the cars had an antique quilt on it.  Someone told me that the quilts were from the collection of Eleanor Burns.  

This was a nice way to display the quilts, and a lot of people there were having fun looking at the old cars.  

Here are my purchases for the day.  Some are from vendors, but most are from Lollys and Yoders.  It's a pretty small haul, but I have uses in mind for most everything.  OK. I don't have a clue what I'll use that little pile of trims for, but my friend Michele texted me before I got to Shipshewana and said I should stop by the booth and check out the rick-rack with the checks and dots.  I thought it was probably something I needed in my stash.  The trims are from Heritage Quilt Shop.  You can get them on line!

I bought this little basket at Rebecca's Arts and Antique store. It's always nice to see Rebecca and visit with her for awhile.  This little basket is perfect to hold my trims!

I haven't done any sewing yet today.  I went to the porch to take the photos above and fell asleep on the love seat there.  It's really warm and humid today, but I'm going back out and do some stitching before time to get dinner.

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.