Entertain yourself in Lockdown

Do you want to while away the hours at home, but don't have any fancy gear? You can't go out to the fabric store as it is not an essential activity, so can we just make do with what we have?

I thought a hexagon quilt might be easy to make from what you have around home. If you have some old shirts that you can upcycle, that is all you need. It doesn't have to be shirts, but any fine weave cotton will be fine.

A few hexagons to start with, all these are cut from my husband's old shirts, my favourite is the splotchy liberty print on the bottom right. At least 2 of the others were from shirts we had made while we were in Vietnam

You don't need a sewing machine as we will use English paper piecing and then the hexagons together by hand. The trickiest part is making the templates, but I found a video online to assist with that.

This is what you will need:

old cotton shirts, men's work shirts are ideal
a drawing compass,
a ruler or tape measure,
some stiff cardboard
some thin card or heavy paper
glue stick
scissors (and a rotary cutter if you have one)
needle
thread

Here is a link to the hexagon tutorial if you want to have a go.

Comments

New Fabrics

A lovely parcel arrived from the courier today. My stash builder pack from Pink Castle Fabrics. It is lucky that I get the parcels at all as the courier driver is terrified of the dog. As he rings the doorbell, our fat old golden labrador takes on a much younger and meaner persona, by barking in a deep angry bark and frightens the life out of Manu the Pakistani driver. He hurls the parcel at the front porch and then takes off back to his van as fast as he can. We have tried to tell him that the dog is 90 in dog years, and a complete pussy, but it makes no difference. Anyway I got my parcel, it was full of lovely aqua fabrics. I only just joined this group, and seem to have an obsession with this blue green colour as my stash collection is at least 1/4 of this colour. I have a queen quilt on the go for my bed, but I keep thinking of other things to make as well. That is the affliction of a compulsive quilter.

Road testing Orange Lemon and Lime Drunkards Path

The orange, lemon and lime quilt is almost done, but first it has to be road tested.....by the cat. She doesn't look happy here. I don't have a design wall, I have a design bed, which is why Zali the cat loves it so much. I tried to make it so that the bright orange quarter circles were distributed evenly, and the greys, where they meet are all different pattern. I nearly succeeded. There is one spot where there are the same pattern, but I'm not going to tell you where. This quilt is even too big to lie flat on this bed. That is why I have used a QAYG method and quilted the spirals separately. See my QAYG tutorial here. I think it is a good trade off, as the back is not as perfect as I would like.

Clearview Triangle Super 60

I have had this triangle ruler for a while, but have only used it to make a cot quilt for a friend. I sewed it in strips and then it came together pretty quickly. It was for a little boy, but I didn't want to make it in the traditional blues, so went for teal, browns and neutrals. I pulled out the triangle ruler again this week and used it to trace around on a piece of A4 paper. Then I glued a 1 1/4" strip of black down the centre and sewed up scraps of orange down either side, using the paper as a foundation. I did the same with lime greens and greys. The centre black line seems to tie it it all together. If I make more The black lines will form an asterix ***** Oh no, I have started another project!

Compulsive Quilts

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