"directionally correct"

I was a virtuous grad student and went to work this morning to start some new experiments. It means next week is going to be incredibly busy, but it'll help things move forward faster. OK, that wasn't really such a virtuous thing to do, it's what a grad student should do, but both my weekend and next week would have been easier if I hadn't, so when I got home I decided to reward myself for doing the right thing by doing the fun thing for a while:As a result, I've made progress on my projects at work and my fun projects at home! These are two sets of aqua and white nine-patch blocks I started working on one night ages ago. The picture above shows 16 squares that will have sashing in between the blocks; the 25 blocks below, with a different blue fabric but the same white, will be sewn directly to each other, without white space in between. As Brad would say, since he works in industry these days, everything is "directionally correct." Things feel like they're going veeeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooowly, but they are moving forward.
~Phosphorelated

how hexagons work

I enjoyed the sunshine on my porch today making more hexagon pieces to sew together, and thought I'd take advantage of the natural light to show how hexagons work! I'm starting with commercially-cut paper pieces, though if I were more patient or a little less OCD about exactitude, I could cut my own.I'm using hexagons that measure 1" on a side, so a 2.5" square of fabric is big enough to cover the entire piece of paper. I have a lot of 2.5" strip scraps left over from various projects, and have raided my scrap basket to make as many 2.5" squares as possible. I now have stacks of them sitting around the house (and today, on the porch!).The paper piece is set on the wrong side (back) of a piece of fabric; this could be a hexagon of fabric, but it's much easier to just cut a square, so I'm sticking with that. It also seems less wasteful; the extra bits of fabric could get thrown away, or they could add extra bulk (and a little more warmth) to the final quilt.
You fold the edges of the fabric over the paper piece and baste at the corners with thread in a contrasting color:
I'm using plain cream-colored thread, since for this project I'm mostly using saturated colors. I've seen people use blaze-orange, but I like the soothing effect of the white and it's still easy to see so it will be easy to remove later.
Once all six sides have been folded over and basted down, the back of the hexagon looks like this:
And from the front, you have a nice hexagon of fabric with lines of basting thread!
Two hexagons get put together front to front, and you sew along one edge. Unfold, add another hexagon, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Once the hexagons are sewn together, the basting thread is removed and the paper is taken out. A queen-sized quilt with hexagons this size will take more than 1,000 hexagon pieces. That's a lot of hexagons! We'll see how far I get before I get bored.
~Phosphorelated

a new obsession: hexagons!

I've been seeing quilting folks around the blogosphere playing with hexagons lately, and it looked like fun. I've never tried English paper piecing before; you take cut paper shapes (in this case, hexagons), baste your fabric to the paper, and then hand-stitch the fabric together. Later you remove the basting thread and take out the paper. Here is a little flower I made out of hexagons, still with the white basting thread in place:
While hand sewing isn't my favorite, one big draw of this is that since everything is done by hand I don't need to be in front of my sewing machine. I don't have a good knitting project going right now, and need something to do with my hands in the evening. My hexagons are 1" on a side, and it takes a 2.5" square of fabric to cover one paper hexagon. This makes them a perfect size for using up scraps of the 2.5" strips I used on Button's quilt and Brad's quit, so there are lots of fabrics here you may recognize from earlier projects. Making hexagons is really addictive:
After playing around with various shapes and patterns for a bit, I decided that I really like the hexagon shape and wanted to emphasize that, so I'm assembling my small hexagons into larger hexagons, like so:
Then I'll assemble my big hexagons into a quilt top!
I'm having way too much fun.
~Phosphorelated

not just bathrooms

Not so long ago, I was beginning to fear that I had an unhealthy obsession with bathroom floors.Fortunately, it turns out that, while an excellent source of cool tile patterns, bathroom floors are not the only place to find these treasures. On the way home from the Madison farmer's market this morning, we passed several doorways with sadly neglected but cool tile.
This last one is definitely my favorite and I really must find time to put it into a quilt at some point. Neat, isn't it?
~Phosphorelated

even in D.C.

If you've been hanging around the blog for a while, you may have noticed that I have a thing for tile floors, which I most often find in bathrooms. Turns out they have interesting tiles in D.C., too!

A ladies room in the National Gallery of Art:

Tonight I had pizza with friends of a friend, and the hostess had an interesting bathroom floor, too!I'm beginning to worry about my bathroom floor obsession. But this seems to be where all the cool old tiles got put and were left alone!
~Phosphorelated

quilting inspriration in D.C.

While wandering around D.C. with friends on this glorious afternoon stolen from the conference, I found a lot of beautiful lines that made me think of quilting patterns. Not patchwork for the quilt top, but the actual lines of quilting to hold the layers together.

This sidewalk drain reminded me of a lot of old rosette-like circular patterns I've seen done on individual (usually solid-colored) blocks of old hand-quilted quilts:
This ironwork (at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden) reminds me more of modern machine quilting patterns. Beautiful, isn't it?
~Phosphorelated

I love people

I'm at a conference in D.C.
Let's get a close-up of that sign:
I love people.
~Phosphorelated