Arrow Tail Quilt

I was initially going to make a hexagon quilt for both my son and daughter, but after a couple months of basting hexagons, I changed my mind. :) I needed to find something that I liked just as much, but that wouldn't take as much time. I came across this arrow tail quilt on Pinterest, and decided it was perfect.

I reduced the size of the "arrows" to be about the same size of the hexagons, so that they would look similar. I liked that the arrows were a little more masculine, too. I used quite a few of the same fabrics in this quilt, but added in a few more blues, greens, and grays and omitted most of the pinks. I cut out about 900 of these shapes, and then laid them out how I wanted them.

I put each row into a stack from top to bottom, and labeled the rows with numbers. Then I started sewing them together! It went pretty quick.

Sewing the rows to each other went even quicker, I just had to be careful to try to match up all the points. I had to stretch some fabrics more than others to get the seams to all match up. I was worried that it would be hard to keep the points together, or that you would see a lot of mistakes from the front, but I'm really happy with how it turned out!

I ironed all the seams as I went, and that helped a lot. Soon, it was all sewn together! I trimmed off the points on the top and bottom, and got it all ready for quilting.

I love the gray hexagon print I found for the back because it ties in with the other quilt! I decided to just quilt every other row, and I followed the zig zag line. I might have quilted every row, but I was short on time and it was a little hard to maneuver the quilt in my machine with all those angles.

I'm really happy with how well it goes with my daughter's quilt, but yet still has it's own look. It was a pretty quick sew, although there were a lot of small pieces to work with.

I'm so happy to have these quilts completed. They make me smile every time I see them. I didn't do much other sewing while I was working on these, besides a few quick things here and there, so I am looking forward to sewing up some clothes! On to the next project!

Hexagon Quilt

I had to take a picture of the back before I covered it up with batting and backing! I stretched it and layered it and pinned all the layers together, then machine quilted it on my sewing machine.

I chose to do a simple diagonal line pattern so it wouldn't take away from the patterns on the front. It was also the quickest and easiest since I was trying to get it done in time for Christmas! I felt bad about not hand quilting my hand-sewn quilt, but I also knew that I wanted it to be durable and not fall apart, and I thought machine quilting might make it a little more sturdy. I am really happy with how it turned out!! I did hand sew the binding, and then it was complete!

And here it is on my daughter's bed, with a little sneak peak of my son's quilt on top. This was definitely a big project, but I loved every minute that I worked on it, and my daughter knows just how long it took and how much work I put into it. Hopefully this is something that can be handed down to her daughter someday.

I'd love to do another hexagon/paper piecing project sometime, but probably not something this big. :)

English Paper Piecing - Part 2

I finally finished this quilt I've been working on for months and months! After I got all the hexagons basted to the papers, the next step was to sew them into rows. I stacked all the hexagons into rows in the order I wanted them, and stitched each straight side together (I don't have a picture of that step). It was a little time consuming because I had to knot and cut the thread at the beginning and end of each short side. But that way I could take just one stack with me somewhere, instead of sewing one hexagon onto a big group of other ones.

Then I sewed the rows together, which was also a little tricky because they didn't lay straight together because of all of the angles. I sewed 2-3 rows together, and then started a new group because it was easier to hold a small number of rows than a big group. Then I sewed all the 3-row groups into 6-row groups, and soon enough it was complete!

It took me about 1 hour each to sew the 20 hexagons into each row, and then another hour to sew each row together, 32 rows in all. So adding that to the 25 hours of basting the hexagons, that was AT LEAST 90 hours of hand stitching. Probably more.

Next was the fun part - taking the paper out! I used a seam ripper to cut all the basting threads, and then slipped the paper out from the back. This part went really quick and it was so rewarding! It really felt like a quilt once the paper was out! I trimmed the hexagons on the end and actually stitched the half-hexagons into the other end of the quilt, so I didn't waste any of them.

Up next: the finished quilt!