Hello, hello, HELLO, my Lovelies! Look what I made yesterday and today, instead of packing or working on quilting my Deco quilt! Behold, the Adorable and Delicious Little Bordered 3/8" Hexagon Blocks for my Stonefields sampler quilt project! I had so much fun making these blocks! (This post contains affiliate links).
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| 6" Finished Stonefields Blocks 14 & 15: Bordered 3/8 in. Hexagons |
The directions in the Stonefields Quilt pattern by Susan Smith are sparse, which is fine by me as I have difficulty following instructions anyway. The pattern designer assumes everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is stitched by hand. That's fine if Methuselah is making this quilt, but those of us whose life expectancy is less than 900 years need to make peace with compromises from time to time. I enjoy hand stitching but I am really, REALLY slow at it, so I'm mixing in machine work where it makes sense to me to do so.
For instance, why would I hand piece this square in a square block background when it is so easy to foundation paper piece this block and I can print my foundation paper patterns right from my EQ8 software to whatever size I need them to be?
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| Foundation Paper Pieced Background |
I rough cut all my patches before FPP stitching and lay them out next to my machine. Those fabrics in the lower left corner of the above photo are the ones I've selected for the hexie rosette that will be appliquéd to the center of this block later.
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| 6" Finished Block Background Ready for Hexie Rosette |
And now, for the rascally little EPP hexies! This was my first ever experience making EPP hexies. Five years ago, I sewed an EPP monogram letter C block for a baby quilt (read about that here) and in August of 2016 I made unsuccessful experiments combining both FPP (foundation paper piecing) and EPP (English paper piecing) methods to piece a tricky block from the Farmer's Wife Sampler book (read about that here).
Well, I've got more experience and better skills now than I had back then, and this time around I'm a lot happier with my results.
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| Thread Basted 3/8 in. Hexies |
Notes to Self (and to Other Interested Parties):
- I'm using commercially made hexagon templates with 3/8" sides. They came in an optional kit that I purchased with my pattern.
- After reading a blog post from the Brimfield Awakening EPP gurus where they experimented with different stitching methods and threads, I decided to thread baste my hexies using 50/3 cotton Guttermann thread and a size 10 milliners needle, but switched to 100 wt polyester Microquilter thread with a size 11 milliners needle to whipstitch the edges of my hexies together. Microquilter from my long arm quilting thread stash was the closest thing I had to the 100 wt poly Invisafil thread that Brimfield Awakenings recommended.
Even in the ultra-fine, thinnest weight available, so skinny that you can't see the stitches as you're making them, 100 wt polyester still has the strength of 50 wt or even 40 wt cotton thread. I wish I'd known this for my previous EPP attempts! The thread really does make a huge difference.
See?
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| Zoomed WAY In to See the Stitches |
And here that seam is from the right side, again, this is a zoomed-in photo which is why the fabric weave looks like a waffle.
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| Same Seam, Right Side |
I needed just one Wonder Clip to hold things securely positioned while I was hand stitching. I made my first hexie rosette by attaching all six outer ones to the center first, then stitching the outer hexies together one short seam at a time. On this second rosette I tried attaching each outer hexie completely, in an "L" seam, and preferred doing it that way.
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| Wonder Clip Love |
Here's my completed hexie rosette. I really have absolutely no idea how long it took me to make this little cutie because I was zoned out in my Happy Place, giggling and smiling like a fool and paying no attention to the sun's travels across the sky...
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| HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!!! 😍 |
And then all of a sudden it was four o'clock in the afternoon and I was wondering where on Earth did my day go, and what about all of those other things on my To Do list!! Having reprogrammed and saved my own personal preferred invisible appliqué stitch on my Bernina B990 sewing machine (read about that here), I decided that I'd spent enough hand stitching hours on each of these tiny hexie rosettes and gave myself permission to appliqué them to their respective block backgrounds by machine.
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| Invisible Machine Applique on My Bernina B990 |
More Notes to Self:
- I gave each hexie rosette a good starching and pressing before and after removing the template papers. Then I used tiny dots of Roxanne's Glue Baste It to secure them in position on my block backgrounds. The starch and the extremely narrow width of my appliqué stitch precluded the need for any stabilizer during machine stitching
- I used invisible monofilament thread in a size 60/8 Microtex needle, with Microquilter in my bobbin
- I used my open toe presser foot #20D and turned on the B990's laser feature, which shines a dot of red light precisely in the location of the next needle penetration. That made it really easy to ensure that every stitch landed exactly where I needed it as I navigated around the perimeter of the rosettes
- I did not use my machine's auto securing or auto trim features. Instead I held onto my thread tails at the beginning, ended stitching at the exact point where I'd begun, threaded the tails into a hand needle and pulled them to the back of the work to tie off
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| Tra-la-la-la-laaaaaaa! |
So, what do y'all think? Is this sacrilege? Hand sewn EPP hexagon rosettes machine appliqué to the block! I should note that it IS possible to sew EPP with the sewing machine; I hunted down and watched several different methods of doing so on YouTube. I decided that either the results shown in the tutorials didn't meet my personal standards, or that the machine methods looked too fiddly to bother with. Not that I wouldn't try them ever, on some other project, perhaps one where I was working with larger patches.
Machine appliqueing the rosettes to my backgrounds made sense because I am really, REALLY pleased with how closely my new machine applique stitch resembles my hand stitching, doing this step by machine prevented any fraying of my already-to-exact-size background block due to scrunching and handling the block during hand applique stitching, and I felt I had invested my hand stitching time into the aspect of the block where I got the biggest payoff for those efforts.
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| How Do I Love My Sewing Machine? Let Me Count the Ways... |
Side note about how that laser feature works on the B990, because the marketing materials do a terrible job of explaining why anyone would want this for reasons other than machine embroidery. I stopped my machine with the needle in the down position for the photo above, which is why you don't see any red dot of light on the work. When the laser light is turned on, each time the machine's needle goes to the UP position, it shines that red dot of light onto the next place where the needle is going to go DOWN, and that helps ensure that the needle is landing in the background fabric for the straight stitches and biting just barely into a thread or two of the appliqué fabric at each swing "bite" zigzag stitch. You can also tell as you're approaching an inside or outside corner exactly when to pivot your work. No more guessing and getting that "almost right!"
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| Backing Trimmed Away |
Not sure whether it was all the starch I used to ensure my hexie rosettes held their shape after template removal, but it felt like there was a lot of bulk at the center of these finished blocks so I trimmed the background fabric away behind each rosette. Remember that these are 3/8" hexies with 1/4" seam allowances so each one is already two to three layers thick. Not sure whether this is a "done thing" with English Paper Piecing but it's "done NOW!"
Here are all of my completed Stonefields blocks on my design wall together:
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| Stonefields Completed Blocks 1-15 |
Two things: the blocks I finished today may look "out of place" with the others from a value perspective, but I'm not worried. They will be fine once they are joined by other blocks that have more "stage presence." Second, most of those appliqué blocks still have oversized backgrounds. Part of me thinks I ought to wait to trim them down until I'm ready to assemble the blocks into a finished quilt. Sometimes I think maybe I should wash the blocks to remove the starch and basting glue, and then trim them down. And then another part of me thinks I ought to trim them down RIGHT NOW because it's harder to get a sense of how the whole quilt is taking shape when some of my blocks are 6 1/2" and other blocks have excess fabric around the edges. Anyone have any advice? When I take all of the blocks off my design wall for my upcoming move, I'll be storing them neatly in a project box and I don't think they are going to ravel and fray no matter what I do. Also, it would be stressful and unpleasant to have to trim down ALL the appliqué blocks near the end of the project.
Alright, enough about this for today. Gosh, I don't even know what day it is. Wednesday? Thursday? I need to get back to the stitch in the ditch quilting on my Deco quilt again tomorrow for sure!
I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:
