Labels

Piece Out

I'm cutting hexagons one by one from fat quarters, because I'd rather spend a little extra time cutting them out, and save all the waste I'd generate by cutting them in a non-tessellated pattern. This is great, but it does generate a number of half-hexagons at the edges of the pieces, which extend just far enough past the halfway point to give me a seam allowance.

Naturally, I can't waste them.

A pile of yellow half-hexagons, some point-to-point and some edge-to-edge, with seams sewn but still pinned. The pile is next to a sewing machine deck and a pile of pink-and-black print strips, all on top of the sewing machine manual.
Yes, that is the instruction manual under there.
And I overcame my usual distrust of sewing machines and learned how to chain piece (which is basically just sewing right off the edge of your pieces and then sticking another piece in there? I swear, some seamstress did that on accident and when her friend looked over her shoulder and asked what she was doing, claimed she'd done it on purpose. And then to prove it, she had to keep going that way).

Two swags of chain-pieced yellow half-hexagons, arranged on a pale wooden warping board hanging on a pale yellow wall. A cone of bright yellow and of deep red yarn is hooked on two of the upper pegs of the board, along with a pair of black-and-white-handled scissors.
It's such a cute little garland. Also makes a nice fashion scarf.
I also had to decorate the space with the new little yellow garland. It's so darling.

Chain-pieced yellow hexagons spread flat, face-down, with seam allowances also flattened open, on a light green ironing board with a white floral pattern. A clear spray bottle about a quarter full of water sits near the point of the ironing board, next to a small pile of crumpled hexagons.
There is no rational place to set up an ironing board in my house.
Unfortunately, as quick as the sewing was, the fiddling around trying to arrange everything to be pressed was not. Wee damp scrappy bits of cloth don't understand the concept of behaving themselves.

Close up of yellow half hexagons pieced edge-to-edge, with seam allowances ironed open, on a pale green background with a white floral design.
In my defense, this time I was baking cookies also. There's a reason the fabric changes from photo to photo.
Eventually, I did get everything pressed neatly. I wanted to press the seams open, rather than to one side, to keep the pieced hexis as flat as possible. I didn't fuss about trimming excess fabric off the halves that came from the corners of the fat quarters, either. One of the beauties of English paper piecing is how forgiving it is of messily cut pieces; it's the perfect technique for people who love fiddly handwork, but get bored with too much prep.

Two yellow hexagons with black, white, pale pink and bright yellow print on a red-brown wood table, showing seams across the edge-to-edge center (left) and point-to-point center (right).
This print shows the piecing most obviously, I think.
After all that work, I still wasn't sure the pieced hexagons would fold neatly around my templates—but they do! The only trick seems to be using slightly heavier paper in the templates for these hexis, to help keep everything neat despite the extra thicknesses of fabric. Some of the prints really disguise the seams, too, but I think the relative scales of hexis to overall blanket will do fine even with these big graphic prints.

A white right hand holding a neat stack of bright yellow hexagons edge-on to the viewer. The hexagons have an inrregular print of orange, salmon, white, pale aqua, and kelly green.
So. Very. Satisfying.
I spent about ten minutes carefully arranging little hexagons in a nice stack, with all the basting thread tails tucked away, to take this photo. I think it was worth it.

Close up of the back of a basted yellow hexagon, showing an illustration of a brunette girl lying on her stomach, reading a book in front of packed bookshelves. Stacks of finished yellow hexagons are just visible in the background.
I'm tempted to frame this one as incidental art.
Some of my templates are cut from magazine covers, and every now and then one lines up perfectly (this one's from a page of upcoming books from a particular press). Others are from junk mail flyers, so they say things like "SAVE MONEY WI" and "o n c o l o g y." Those are a little less inspiring.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment