Wefting and Warping and Weaving

I'm gradually getting the hang of this woven quilt.  I'm adding instructions here for myself for when I make another one, but of course they are for anyone else to use too.

I'm going to refer to weft and warp - if you have problems remembering which is which this may help:

wEFT goes right to LEFT, 

while warP goes toP to bottom

I had a jelly roll which split more or less into darkish fabrics and lightish fabrics (EDIT: my jelly roll had two strips of each fabric, if there was just one this would only come out as about 47 x 36".   I added 2.5 yards of black, also cut into 2.5 strips) 

I used 11 light fabrics for the weft: for each one I used TWO  width-of-fabric strip, 2.5 inches wide, cut into six strips each measuring 2.5 x 6.5 inches.  These got labelled A to K.

I used 11 darker fabrics for the warp: for each one I used TWO width-of-fabric (wof) strip, 2.5 inches wide.  

I used black as my background: I cut 22 wof strips from yardage.

From each pair of warp strips, one got paired with two black strips and stitched so it had a black strip each side.  I pressed the seams to the black fabric

The other warp strip of each fabric got cut into 6.5" strips.

I sub cut the black-warp-black strips into 2.5" strips, and matched them with the 6.5" strips of the same fabric.

 And I clipped them together labelled 1 to 11

And breathe - you have done all the prep and are ready to start creating

Starting with the number 1 warp fabric, I took two black-warp-black units, and stitched them to each side of a weft fabric to make a + block.

I repeated with all the odd numbered warps, and press the seams out to the darker fabric

These blocks (above) are becoming the bottom edge of the quilt.  You can now see some of them in the right place.  I now only need to pop the even numbered warp fabrics into place and they are already to be stitched together to make the row.

 

Alternate rows are slightly different:  If you see the top row here it needs a red-with-white-spots warp on the left but it also needs a black-weft-black unit to the very left.

Luckily this row will only need 5 "+" blocks, so once they've been made using the even numbered warp units, and there will be one weft left over.  That one needs to have black top and bottom, and then needs to be sub cut into two 2.5" units which will be the first and last units in the row

Clear as mud?

My head is hurting, so I'm just going to give up typing and go and look at the beautifulness that is my progressing weft and warp weaving quilt :-)

(photographed at 90 degrees, so the weft and the warp are swapped here, sorry)

Wednesday Weaving

I have a love of quilts that appear to be woven or are woven:

I made this 4 years ago

And this 2 years ago

and two of these 2 1/2 years ago

And started this 4 1/2 years ago (but still not finished it)

and for the last six months I have been pondering this block from Block lotto (October 2014)

I've finally given in, and yesterday I was sewing black strips to either side of strips from a black and red and white jelly roll

 - I've even done a plan

I'm loving it already!!!

A Problem with Pink

So . . . I had loads of scrappy trip strips left over from Lisa's Christmas Quilt,  I decided to join them all together to make a bonus quilt

I 'd been given a roll of dark red fabric

So I actually decided to back the bonus quilt, and I even quilted it, proper like!

And I did a border and a nice scrappy binding

And then I just thought I'd wash it in case it ran a bit

I did use a colour catcher (ooops!)

It doesn't look too bad on this photo

It looks a little pink on this photo

But is clearly *very* pink in contrast to white paper

Needless to say the fabric is now going in the bin!

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Jilly's Garden Gate

A year or so ago my father and my aunt were visiting from Seattle, and we all went and had lunch with a friend of his, from the old days, and his wife.  Chris and Jilly have a wonderful house and after a pub lunch we sat in a quiet sundrenched courtyard having coffee and cake.

Opposite my chair was this garden gate

I love the lines of it, and it called out to become a quilt.  By coincidence my aunt had brought me some fabric - flowery fabric.

I managed to find some "wood" fabric and have worked on this on and off since.  It had never progressed enough to become a blog post by itself until now, all of a sudden, it's assembled, quilted and machine bound, so I present Jilly's Garden Gate:

I just need to hand finish the binding and its done

And I just thought I'd share a Happy Hexie collection - having tacked lots of hexies, I'm now in the mood for making flowers, lets hope I'm soon in the mood for sewing them together!

Harrow Hexies

I have a hexies and triangles project I work on at mother-in-law's.

I had an idea for an arrangement: there is a blue owl in the centre followed by a round of darks, then a round of lights, then darks etc.

I spent a while of attaching pieces randomly: stopping and starting every few seams, but I have worked out a way to attach the pieces with continuous sewing

I hope makes *some* sense!
 
If I was working onto existing hexagons I would attach a triangle in the trough, then another on the flat of the hexi then another in the next trough.

When I'm ready to work onto the triangles I can sew down across and up one hexi, then the same again on the next.

And here is the lovely lady herself

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Hooked on Hexies

I clearly dont have enough hexie projects on the go at the moment - I rescued a bag of rainbow and grey hexies from under a pile of stuff on my workbench, and decided to do something with them!

I speed dated a few arrangements:

 

I've decided on the bottom right version.  There may be enough rainbow hexies to do another layer around the outside too, but I can make that decision when I've got this centre all joined together - sigh, just when I was starting to get my to-do list under control!!!

Very New and Very Old

I made an I-spy quilt for a new baby:

And the Magna Carta wall hanging, celebrating the sealing 800 years ago, has been finished, and is ready for framing

I can boast about how fab it looks as my input has been minimal!!!

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Congratulations!

 

You may recall I hosted a Ho Ho Ho and on We Sew linkie last month.  Thanks to a lot of hard work from Fiona and Paula, the people who finished something Christmassy and linked up were in a draw to win this fab tapestry:

 Congratulations to Sandra who was the winner - and who made these great stacking baskets

Wish you'd joined in? The next post in the series is from Karen at Practically Pippi, and should show upon the 18th May.  You can see the whole 2015 schedule here

Two finishes

We've been watching Breaking Bad, which means hand sewing and binding time . . . which means both the Orange Consequences Quilt, and the Red Christmas Scrappy Trip are FINISHED!!!!

First I attached a double band of hexies to the Orange Consequences Quilt

Then I bound it

And then I finished the binding on Lisa's Christmas quilt

The UFO list is getting smaller and the "done" pile is getting bigger!

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Fairies on Friday

I was one of the students at Chertsey Museum this afternoon - our project was new to me, but the lovely Kaye was our guest tutor and did a great job.

We used wool and felting needles to make fairies 

Everyone enjoyed it, and went happily home with their fairy

Some ladies also brought completed projects from previous month: 

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