Back Home Again!

For a short time!

We are "home again, home again, jiggity jig!"

I hadn't realized how much I missed my home until we came home yesterday.  Driving on the highway for three hours from Albuquerque is always a tiring chore.  But yesterday I drove with enthusiasm because I was going home from a two week absence.  And you know that old saying, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"!  LOL!

But yes, as I was driving up our little road to the cabin, I breathed a sigh of relief ... Yes! Yes! Yes! I am home!

So today, we are doing what needs to be done after a two week absence, cleaning, washing, mowing the lawn. Unfortunately, I will not have time to do any machine sewing, but certainly tonight after chores are done, some hand sewing on my hexies!

Tomorrow would be a good day to get back to machine sewing but alas we have to "go to town" for some grocery shopping and some other errands while we are in "town".  But, again, hand sewing the hexies . . . thank God for the Hexies!!!  Since "town" is 40 miles away, we always try to do all our errands in one trip, it saves a lot on gas!  So usually a trip to "town" is always more or less a whole day affair.

So hopefully Tuesday will be my day to sew on the machine and post more pictures.

Meantime, keep on quilting!

Aveli

Small Tornado Hits My Hexies!

So I am over at my daughter's house. We came to have a family barbecue. We were not able to get together for " Fourth of July" because of my hip so we are getting together now.

Anyway, I brought my plastic bin full of quilting supplies to work on my hexies while we drive here and while I have down time at my daughter's house.

I usually only work on them in the early morning hours and in the late evening before retiring. Yesterday I brought the bin out and was working on the hexies while the granddaughter was still asleep. I didn't pay attention when she came down and she saw the bin.  Of course her two year old eyes lit up with the possibility of a new toy! She was very polite and asked if she could touch the hexies. I guess she thought they were puzzle pieces. She was trying to lay them out and connecting them like puzzle pieces.

She loved all the pieces, there were so many! Then I asked her what color the pieces were and she got every one correct except the grey!

We had a great time "sewing"!

I told her mommy that I hoped this was an indication of her interest in quilting! LOL!!

The first picture is what my bin looks like normally and the second after the "little tornado" did her "sewing"!

Holiday Weekend is Over!

The "Fourth of July" Holiday weekend is over! Had a marvelous time. We went to the Las Vegas Fiestas to see Al Hurricane, a famous "Northern New Mexico music" band.

When we arrived at the park in "Old Las Vegas", we parked and walked to the central park area where the vendors,  music and dancing were to happen.

There were hundreds of people walking, standing and talking, sitting on lawn chairs and on the grass. The lines for the food vendors were long as they usually are for hot dogs, hamburgers, funnel cake, ice cream, sodas, snow cones, indian tacos, sopapillas, red or green chili, ribbon fries, turkey legs and various t-shirts, bracelets and other trinkets.

We were lucky enough to find a spot to sit on the grandstand in front of the bandstand and dancing area. The music was good and loud! As we were looking around for anyone that we might know, my husband's family is from around the Las Vegas, New Mexico area, I felt a raindrop! Oh No! I told my husband we would have to leave if it started raining. . . and sure enough! The amount of rain escalated so rapidly that by the time we ran (as fast as I could with my healing hip) to the parking place for our truck, we were both drenched to the skin. I had no towel to dry off with so I used the inside of my sweatshirt sweater, LOL! I usually carry a towel in our SUV but we were in the truck. We took the truck instead of the SUV because we were planning on moving boxes and furniture from storage after we had listened to the music at the festival.  But, with the rain, we decided not to move anything. We didn't want to risk any items getting damaged by the rain.

So, we went to one of our favorite restaurants, "The Hillcrest" in Las Vegas. By that time it was lunch time and we had to wait to be seated because of the lunch time rush. We had a good lunch in spite of the fact that we were still in very wet clothes. Before we headed home we stopped to do some grocery shopping. It was still raining on our way home to Guadalupita, which is 40 miles away.  As we approached our home village, the rain slowed and stopped completely. But, as we finished putting our groceries away, the rain started again.  This time we were inside our cabin, completely dry in warm and comfy clothes.

The rest of the evening, we watched our usual Saturday lineup of country music shows on RFD TV. Then we watched the fireworks from the capital. It was still raining so no one was shooting off fireworks in our vicinity.

While we were on the way to and from Las Vegas I worked on my Hexie project. I got quite a few hexies basted. Since we were bouncing around in the truck, I couldn't do the fine stitching needed to connect the hexies so I settled for basting the individual hexies.  I only have about a thousand more to baste so it was an accomplishment!

Sorry there are no pictures! I was so preoccupied with the rain at the festival, I totally forgot to take pictures.  Maybe at next year's festival.

Delay in Postings!

I see that I have delayed posting for quite a bit!

I have had several orders to cut and ship and of course, life gets in the way!  I apologize for not posting sooner.

Today I am finishing the last order that I have at the moment.  Since we have no mail today, it will ship tomorrow.  So today after the order is finished, I will be working on my hexies, who have been sorely neglected lately.  And, of course, I will be working on my daughters quilt.

It seems that I will not be able to reach my goal for her birthday, so many things going on lately!  But, probably a month after. . . I hope.  Either way, I am sure she will be excited to get it no matter what time I give it to her.

So I am signing off now so I can get back to finishing that order and get to the hand quilting.

Hexagon Adventure, Chapter 2

Well as mentioned before I had cut my plastic hexagon template from a 1 gallon plastic milk jug.  Great! Now I am ready to cut the hexagons and start sewing. . .wrong!

What on earth will I use to mark the hexagons?? In my sewing experience I have used chalk, chalk markers and #2 pencil.  But this is quilting! There are so many types of markers out there. I guess the only way to find out which is best is to try them out.

I had heard that you can print on the back of the fabric and then cut shapes out for your quilting. I did that but when I test washed the fabric the ink bled into the rest of the fabric.  I guess that's out. On to markers, I tried regular markers from the dollar store.  First, the tip was too big and chunky and second, they went through the material to the front of the fabric. Then I tried fabric markers, same as the dollar store variety. Then I bought this really expensive pen made for marking on fabric. I got the white one.  It was really neat and was a fine tip and showed up really well and didn't go through the fabric and didn't bleed when washed. So, what was the problem? For some reason, when I was writing on the fabric, the ink didn't show up for a good 30 seconds later. So, for each line I drew I had to wait 30 seconds to make sure the line wasn't crooked or that it had drawn with enough ink. With hexagons having 6 sides, that came out to 3 minutes to draw each hexie!! I had to draw hundreds of these . . .that was not going to work out. I thought I was doing something wrong so I did some research and found out that other quilters were having the same problem as I was with the delay in showing up.

So now I went to pencils.  Regular colored pencils were no good because they need a heavy pressure in order to draw on fabric and that pressure would stretch the fabric. The last resort was my trusty #2 pencil.  Very thin line when sharp, does not need a lot of pressure, washes out and is pretty cheap!  Later I tried a #1 pencil.  Do you know how difficult it is to get a #1 pencil in the mountains?  Practically impossible! I ordered a box of #1 pencils online and used it very successfully.  It is a very soft lead so very little pressure is needed for marking and like #2, washes out completely. Then I discovered that I could get a #1 lead in a mechanical pencil --- I was in heaven.

So here I am merrily drawing and cutting and forming my little hexies.  YAY! I went from wanting a dresser scarf to wanting a bed cover.  So I started looking for a workable pattern where I could use the rows that I had already sewn.  Then I discovered the "Insanity Quilt" made in 1/2" hexies!!!

Oh my word was it beautiful! I was in love! I immediately decided that the hexies I was making were too large . . .LOL! I decided to use my one inch freezer paper foundations that I sell on my website and start all over! OH NO, Really???

Stay tuned for Chapter 3 in my ongoing Hexagon Adventure . . . .

Everyone, keep on quilting!
Aveli

Hexagons

I have always wanted to do a quilt project by "hand".  I know, I know, CRAZY!  Why would I want to do a project by hand when I have 2 perfectly good sewing machines!

Well, to start off, there are a lot of hand sewers out there. I've always wanted to see what kind of woman or "gumption" I would have to have to do this type of thing.  Trust me, you really have to LOVE hand work to do this.

I have always felt drawn to hand work. Since I was little, my mother taught me to embroider and crochet.  Later I would pick up counted cross stitch,  knitting and quilting.  By the way, the cousin who taught me to knit was left handed, so I knit left handed.  It throws a lot of knitters off when they see me.  As one lady commented a long time ago when I was younger -- "What ARE you doing??"

I love to hand quilt my quilts.  But, in my quilting history I had not made an entire quilt by hand instead of the sewing machine. I do a lot of applique, but I usually do piecing. I also wanted a project to do on the road while we travel back and forth from this great state to another.  Applique was out of the question for me because of the finesse needed and my failing "old" eyes.  So, I decided on hexagons!

At first, I decided to start with just a long skinny scarf for my dresser.  But, when I saw how nice it was starting to look, I upped the size to a crib size and then to a double bed size.

Once I decided to do this project, I was overwhelmed by the many choices of methods to do this labor intensive project!

One of the first things I had to decide which template do I use for cutting the hexagons.

I know that I sell pre-cut or die cut hexagon fabrics either alone http://avelisquilts-ivil.tripod.com/id9.html or in kits http://avelisquilts-ivil.tripod.com/pieced_quilt_kits.html (scroll down for hexagons).  I also sell precut Hexagons in freezer paper either precut  or printed on freezer sheets http://avelisquilts-ivil.tripod.com/id165.html.

The problem was that I was like Goldilocks. . . the 2" was too small and the 4" was too big.  I needed something "just right". What I wanted was about 1/4 inch bigger all around the 2" size so that when I sewed them, they would end up being 2".   So, either of the sizes I sell were not "just right"!

Also, remember I couldn't use the freezer paper method, as a template for cutting, because I was going to be in the car and an iron was unavailable. So I went ahead and manually drew the 2" size by tracing around one of my freezer paper die cut pieces on a regular piece of paper.  I then used the freezer paper piece to draw a copy on a piece of milk jug plastic with a permanent marker.  I heartily recommend using this plastic for templates.  It saves throwing the plastic into the landfill, its economical and it endures. Yes, you still have some plastic left over that can't be used.  But, it's a lot less than what you started with.  Just make sure you have a heavy pair of scissors when cutting it because of the thickness.

Another thing I like about milk jug plastic is that the inside of the milk jug is rough textured, not smooth like the outside.  The rough side when placed against the fabric helps to grip the fabric.

I now had a 2" drawing on regular paper and a 2" drawing on a large pieces of milk jug plastic.
Next, I used my ruler and drew an additional 1/4" line all the way around the paper 2" drawing. I now had the size that I desired. I cut this out on the last line that I drew, not the inside line. I used this piece of paper as a template to draw another hexagon on the milk jug plastic.  I now had two hexagons drawn on the milk jug plastic.  one was 2" and one was 2 1/2 inches.  I cut both of them out, punched a hole in the middle of both.  I was ready to start drawing on fabric!!!

WAIT! No I wasn't!  What was I going to use to mark on the fabric??  With all the choices of marking tools now days. . . . Well that's another day's blog entry!

Stay tuned for further adventures in sewing Hexagons and follow my progress!  Meanwhile, back to quilting!!!

Hexagon Box - Repost

I posted this on my old blog in January for New Year's Greeting, but I thought it was worth reposting on this new blog.

Happy New Year to all! Hope all of you will have a great year and quilt all year long!

I had previously made a box for my one inch hexies because I was unable to find or wish to spend money on several boxes to hold them while I was making individual hexies.

Now I have adjusted the pattern and have made a mock up of a box for half inch hexies. Here is a picture of the mock up next to the one inch box.

Notice that the one inch box measures approximately 5 inches while the half inch box measures only two inches.

Here is the inside of the box. You can see how snugly the hexies fit inside. There is no chance for them to shift sideways to get wrinkled.

You can request either the half inch or the one inch pattern by contacting me through the "contact" link on the right.

Of course you can always use the plastic craft boxes available at the local craft store. But this is so much cheaper! All you need is the pattern and a cereal box to glue it to and cut and glue and you have a box!

Hope you enjoy this little pattern and the bigger one too!