Journal Notes

My first quilt was squares and for my second I wanted to push it a little further and hopefully learn different skills. First hex quilt was definitely a challenge. Cut out the 160+ hexagons and started sewing them by machine. Was able to get 5 rows done and my machine broke, had to wait 5 weeks before I could get it fixed.. Started to sew it by hand and after 6 rows noticed that the quilt was arcing instead of going straight. I must have unintentionally stretched the fabric when hand sowing. I had marked the 1/4 inch seam using the 1/4 inch seam holes in the hexagon template which game way to inaccurate marking. To unpick the quilt and re-sew it wasn’t going to be worth it so I restarted it again. This time I used a 1/4 inch rule to draw the seam line and I over cast the edges of the hexagons as the lose of fabric threads through man handling had made the hexagons mis-shaped increasing previous errors. The other thing I did was rotate the hexagons so that a bias hexagon edge was sewn alongside a weft or warp edge to reduce stretching in the quilt. Second time around the quilt was really accurate and very little stretch😃 Created the top of the quilt with a 4 inch border, learnt how to mitre the border of YouTube, really easy and looks so cool. Quilted the layers together by following the hexagons on the top sheet, a lot harder than I thought. Having only a sewing machine and a large-ish quilt meant that I had to put pressure on the needle when rotating the fabric, this occassionally caused thread nesting or needle jumping when it straightened up. Overall a really good project, lots of mistakes learned and fixed. Learnt how to do a y-seam, mitred border. Also learn not to give up as it is just a learning exercise. The quilt is going to be a lap quilt for the mother in law and is about 40” by 50” Still have the binding to do then finished job