Hexies!!!

Hello my beautiful friends! I promised more details about my projects in my first post and I'm here to deliver! A couple of years ago I started seeing a lot of posts and pictures of quilts and other projects made with paper-pieced hexies and I absolutely fell in love. Yes, it seems a little bit loony tunes to think about, a completely hand stitched quilt, made by someone who actually owns a sewing machine. You'd have to be crazy! Well, that may be true, but I can think of no greater accomplishment, or gift, than a quilt that has had hours and hours, months and months, sometimes years and years of someone's hand stitching. Hand stitching = true love, people. If you ever receive anything that was hand sewn, know that that person loves you. If they're anything like me, their fingers bled, their hands ached, and they just kept on stitching because they loved. Don't get me wrong. Machine stitching is love, too. A lot goes in to making a quilt, or a dress, that you just don't understand until you've made one. But hand stitching... it's what my Great Grandma Baker did, decades ago, with a house full of children to care for and responsibilities that I cannot fathom, she hand stitched, clothes, quilts, dozens of quilts. A few of these quilts I'm fortunate enough to have in my possession. I treasure them more than any other things in my house, because my Great Grandma Baker, who I never really knew because she passed away when I was a year old, hand stitched them. They're not just old pieces of fabric. They're weeks and weeks, months and months of her aching, needle-poked fingers, because she loved. And so I make hexies.

I saw this picture of a hexie quilt online and this is the quilt that made me want to make one myself.

I've learned a lot of little tips and tricks for making hexies that make it go a little faster, especially if you're wanting to make a whole quilt's worth! There are a lot of different ways to make hexies, some people like to glue the edges down, instead of stitching them. Some people sew right through the paper. But I learned to make them from Lori Holt's blog called "Bee in My Bonnet". Lori Holt is the queen of all things quilting and I would give anything to spend a day in her sewing room. But for now I'll have to settle for reading her blog and buying her books. :) I could give instructions on making hexies but she's already done a perfect job of it! Her tutorial on making hexies can be found here

Since I wanted to make a whole quilt, I went and picked out several fat quarters, 33 to be exact, (I might have had a few of those to start with, I can't remember) that I thought went well together. I found it quite easy and fast to cut the fat quarters up into 2 3/4" squares (for the 1" hexies). I got 42 squares out of each FQ. You can stack the FQ's together, 4 or 6 at a time, as long as your rotary blade is good and sharp! Then you end up stacks of pretty squares!

You can then lay your paper hexie pattern on a stack of 4 or 5 squares at a time, again, as long as your scissors are sharp, and cut a 1/4 inch, or a bit more, around your paper.

Your hexies don't have to be perfect when you cut them, since they will be folded around your paper, then they will be perfect!

Hexies are measured by the length of one side. So these hexies I've been working on are 1" hexies, since one side measures 1". I've also recently started some 1/2" hexies. Tiny hexies for some tiny projects. For these ones, I cut the fabric into 1 3/4" squares before cutting around the paper hexie.

I bought my paper hexies at my favorite quilting store here in Utah County, American Quilting. They're 3 cents a piece and I bought 100 of them and then when I ran out I used one as a pattern and cut my own out of card stock. Then when I wanted to try the 1/2" hexies, I went and bought 100 of them and just finished them! So now I have this cute little candy jar full of 100 tiny hexies awaiting some tiny projects!

And to end with, I'll tell you how I lug all of this around with me wherever I go! Hexies make the perfect take-along sewing project. I take them on road trips, to family gatherings, PARADES! My PK has been in marching band for the past 4 years, so there's a whole line-up of parades to sit through. I drop him off super early where the band is meeting up, then I go find a spot and camp out waiting for the parade to start. And while I'm waiting I get a ridiculous amount of hexies sewn! You can find whatever sort of box you like to pack all your supplies in.

And it all fits perfectly in one box like this!

So everywhere I go I can be working on my lifetime project of 1300 some odd hexies. Someday, someone I love will have this quilt. And hopefully they'll know that it took me years. Years of hand stitches and finger pokes, and aching hands. Because I love them.

And speaking of my Great Grandma Baker, today is her birthday! Her 121st birthday! She was a lovely woman who worked hard for her family and left behind such lovely, hand stitched things for all of us to enjoy long after she was gone. Here are a few of them.

Happy Birthday Grandma Baker! And happy day everyone! Thanks for stopping by!

XOXO
~ Elizabeth

My Cabin Sewing Retreat

Welcome to my first blog post! One of the things I love to do is read about the creative projects, especially sewing projects, that people are working on. I get so many ideas and so much inspiration from all of those lovely bloggers out there, so I thought I would share a few of my projects here!

For those who don't know me ~~ I've been married for almost 20 years now to my first love, childhood sweetheart, and best man I could ever hope for, Bruce. We have 5 very busy and energetic kids. 4 boys, PK is 17, Benjamin 15, Owen 11, Oliver 9, and the miraculous surprise of our lives little girl, Piper, who is 4. She added a lot of pink and dollies and fluff to our house full of boys and she is the inspiration and the drive behind most of my sewing. I've been learning how to quilt ever since my oldest was a baby, but having a girl made me want to learn how to sew , well, everything else! After working for the past 7 1/2 years, I just recently became a stay-home mom again and I couldn't be happier. I'll admit, it's taken some getting used to, being home for all of the after school craziness. I really have to brace myself for 3:30. BUT, it's also nice to be able to cook dinner, help with homework, have some family time every single night, and work on all the things that have been started and then cast aside! So there's a little about me!

This weekend I got to go on a little sewing vacation! Heehee! That's what I'll call it anyway. We took a trip up to my in-laws' cabin in Wyoming for Easter and the first few days of our Spring Break. The kids and my hubby got to run around and build forts in the forest, make weapons with my FIL's wood working tools, build fires, and drive up to the frozen lake and try to break through the ice by throwing big rocks at it. (You know, the usual boy stuff.)

I, however, am awaiting an MRI and possible surgery because I've had a lot of pain in my knee that's just getting worse. So, knowing I would be doing no such running around, I took a pile of hand sewing with me to the cabin to keep myself busy.

This quilt, with VW Buses and Bugs all over it, I got all quilted, and got the binding sewn on. I just needed to hand sew the back side of the binding, so I took that with me to finish for my youngest boy, Oliver. Depending on the size of the quilt, it usually takes me between 4 and 6 hours to hand sew the binding, so I knew I would need to take other things. ;)

I also took this quilt, which is 12 or 13 years in the making! This one I've been hand quilting here and there for the past couple of months while I'm watching movies in bed. I can get one block quilted during the length of a movie! I got 2 blocks done this weekend so now I have 6 blocks all quilted and still have 6 more plus the sashing and borders. After everything this quilt and I have been through, I'm really happy with how it's turning out.

And last but not least, I took what is turning out to be my eternal project, my box of hexies. I started doing hexies in July of 2013 and this is what I have so far.

In an attempt to keep this first post less than 3 miles long, I will be going into more detail about these 3 projects in separate posts, soon to come! All in all it was quite a relaxing weekend. I got to sew. The kids got to play. The perfect vacation if you ask me. Thanks for visiting me here at my blog! I hope to make lots of creative friends here!

XOXO
~ Elizabeth