Futurella Quilt

I know it's been the better part of a year since you last laid eyes on the Futurella quilt -- what can I say? Some projects move slower than others, chez crafty.


I had the top sewn together by the summer, but didn't get around to adding the borders until fall, and then a couple of weeks back, I finally laid it all out and basted and quilted it and put the binding on. Finis.

It is already gone to the recipient, or I would have taken some more close up photos, to show the border fabrics (a deep pink animal print, a matching yellow animal print, and a greyish green hexagon print) and the pretty backing fabric (white with little pink polka dots.) It came together pretty well, and fluffed up nicely after a washing.

I'm not completely satisfied with the way the hexagons are laid out, in the end. I think I could have done some more rearranging to improve it. It's my own fault, for not leaving it up for a few days (or a week) while I was in the planning stages. It's always good to mull it over, rather than just deciding it's done. Or maybe I'm just a perfectionist.

Into the Future

Having loosely sorted the Futurella hexagons by colour, I began putting them on the design wall, today. (By "design wall" I mean a piece of fabric that I have crookedly hanging from clothes hangers in my bedroom.) This is a photo of the early stages. I'm not sure if it looks like much at this point -- particularly because the fabric they are attached to is uneven and is even hiding some hexagons in the fold -- but I wanted to keep you posted on the progress, so there you have it. I have all the hexagons up and in place, now, but am mulling it over for another day or two, to decide if I want to move any, before I commit to it and sew them together.

These Boots are Made for Spacewalking

My two weeks off from work are almost over, and a part of me feels like I should have gotten more done. Fear not, the other part of me remembers that a vacation should be relaxing.

I have begun knitting a new lace shawl, which I am loving, but mostly I've been occupying my time with quilts. I've gotten another chunk of hexagons made for the Ingalls quilt, and am in the very early stages of two other quilts -- both machine applique quilts (sharp learning curve on that one, since I've barely done any before.)

What I am most excited about right now, though, is turning this fabric
into yet another One Block Wonder quilt. (As always, click photo to embiggen.)

The fabric is called Futurella, and as you can see, it is covered in pinup girls with a sort of 60s sci-fi twist. My favourite is the one with the bouffant, sitting in the chair. The last time I made one of these quilts with pinup fabric, it worked really well, so I thought I would give it another try. This one will be different, since it has more colour variation, although overall the print isn't any busier than the black and pink one was. With this sort of quilt, one never knows what will come of it, however, until you actually cut it up and sew it.

Today I finished sewing up the hexagon halves. (Those of you who have made this journey with me, before, will remember that the halves aren't sewn together until the final layout of the quilt is determined, so you'll have to forgive me the raw edges down the center of the hexagons, that make them seem asymmetrical.)

These are a few of my favourites -- I love the girl in the bottom left, and the one above it (how perfect is it that one of the motifs in the fabric is actually hexagons?) To see the rest of the hexagons (114 in total!) you'll have to wait a while, until I figure out the layout...

Requiem for a project

Well, I took a few days to complete the "day's work" I had left on the quilt top, but it's all said and done, now... Here she is, in all her glory:


As always, I was surprised and delighted at every turn -- sewing the hexagons together in their final arrangement always sharpens and focuses the whole design. I had been somewhat concerned that it was just a big crazy blob of hexagons, but it really came together and confirmed my instincts on arrangement. (Though admittedly, there are a couple that I would love to shift around to perfect things -- good thing I'm not a perfectionist or I'd probably pull out the seam-ripper and get to work.) Then I started sewing on the borders and thought they were going to be a disaster, and detract from the whole thing... but again, my instincts were confirmed, and it turned out really nice, I think.

I have named it Requiem, partly because of the dark fabrics lending it a funereal tone, and partly because I was listening to Mozart's Requiem on a loop for most of the making of it. (80's pop for the rest, but I can't really name it after Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance With Somebody, can I.)

So that's probably all you'll see of her for a while -- my quilting frame is on the way (yay birthdays!) but it will be months until I have the hand-quilting finished (with the last quilt I made, I really pushed myself to finish it as quickly as possible, and it took a month or two to complete; this one I plan to do more leisurely, so it will likely be end of summer or autumn before I get to the finish line.)

For the record, the backing fabric will be a nice mossy green, and the binding will be a lovely blue, which hopefully will bring out the blues of the quilt.

I'm really happy with this one, but now I have to get back to my knitting...

Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it.

Well I must admit it's been a bit slow-going on the quilt, for various random reasons. I haven't prewashed all the fabrics yet... I'm waiting for my quilt frame before I can start quilting... I'm distracted by so many other projects and tv shows on DVD and looming haircuts and general whatnot.

I am a day's work away from having the main quilt top together -- then I will pop on some borders and take a pic for y'all. At the moment, all we have is this photo of some of the strips, which all look verrrry similar, don't you think? I do. Does it make you a bit nervous, how much they all look alike? Makes me a bit nervous. I will just soldier on and I bet it will surprise us all with how it looks in the end.


Meantime, my lone knitty project is redoing my little tam. The aforementioned haircut (to take off all my dreads) will leave my head much much smaller than it was with all that bulk, so I know my tam won't fit anymore. I considered giving it away or trying to shrink it down by felting a bit, but ultimately I came to my senses (?) and realized I could just frog the whole thing and reknit it in the size it was meant to be in the first place. I mean, after all, I love knitting right? Why not knit the same thing out of the same yarn, twice? Stop looking at me like that. It's perfectly normal.

Journey to a Hexagon

Well I finished the last of the (114) hexagons late last night. I was so repeatedly struck by how beautiful they are, and what a surprise each one was, that I felt compelled to share that feeling with you, with one random hexagon from the pile.

Of course each hexagon begins with six triangles, each one exactly the same. From the initial triangle, you can try to get some idea of what the hexagon might look like, but of course there are many possibilities, since you could orient it three ways, i.e with the blue flowers toward the center, or the pink flowers, or the little rosehips. This would give three different hexagons, with varied looks. In the construction of this quilt, I've kept the fabric's straight of grain to the outside edge of the hexagon, which means each one can only be oriented in one way: this means that the blue flower must be toward the center. Even knowing that, you can't really picture the totality of how the elements of the image will play against one another (and against the repeats of themselves.)


When you sew the second triangle to the first, you can begin to get an inkling of what you will end up with. Because a couple of the raw edges are gone, you can see which parts of the image will be left once the triangles are sewn together. Sometimes the most dramatic elements of a triangle will disappear in the seam and you will end up with something very different than you imagined. It's still hard at this point, however, to imagine the total hexagon.


Finally, you sew the third triangle in, and pin the two halves together (since they won't be sewn together until after the arrangement of the hexagons in the quilt is finalized.) At this point, the gestalt of the hexagon is apparent. Now you can see what elements will draw the eye, and in what way. Some of them will appear to spiral outward, or inward. Some will be relegated to background, while others pop out at you. Some will make a star or a circle or a flower or a snowflake. Of course, things will still change a bit -- the outer quarter-inch of the hexagon will disappear into a seam when the quilt top is sewn together, and the center line will be trimmed down in the seam, as well. Sometimes, even this last little bit makes a block appear to change pretty dramatically. Certainly it refines and sharpens the design.

I hope you felt a little bit of surprise and pleasure with the development of this hexagon -- imagine getting to feel that more than 100 times! And that's just the beginning. Now I will slap them up on my "design wall" (which is merely a large piece of cheap fabric tacked to the wall) and start to rearrange. Stay tuned!

Guess What I've Been Up To...

I'll give you a hint... I've cut up several metres of this fabric into 114 sets of six triangles each (that's 684 triangles in total, but who's counting?) I know it sounds insane, but it really wasn't that bad -- took less than two and a half hours, from the time I started ironing and layering the fabric, to the time I was done cutting and stacking all of the itty bitty equilateral triangles.


Here is another hint... two hexagon blocks sewn up and ready to go. These are only the first two -- I've done 19 so far, and you don't know how hard it is to not put up a photo of every single one (they are all so pretty!) The crazy thing about these quilts (the One Block Wonder pattern that I made before, if you haven't pieced it together yet (uh oh... was that a quilting pun?)) is that the hard part is over by the time you layer the fabric -- cutting the triangles is easy, putting them together is so much fun and then you get to play with the design! I will keep you posted with every bit of the progress...

A Pink Quilt

I am told that March 15th is National Quilt Day. This may be a holiday merely in the U.S. for all I know, but I am taking the opportunity to show off the last quilt I made, since several people have been after me to post it, already.

I used the book One-Block Wonders by Maxine Rosenthal, which I borrowed from my sis. It is so much simpler than it looks (no, really!) Basically you stack your fabric so that the same repeat is layered six times, and then cut triangles which you then sew into hexagons. It makes a cool kaleidoscope effect, which you then arrange and rearrange to your heart's content. This rearranging step takes... oh... infinity. At some point you become so exhausted with it that you just decide it's good enough, and you stop. Then you slap on some borders and quilt it and show it off as much as possible so that everyone will tell you how pretty it is and how hard you must've worked and basically stroke your ego much more than this easy quilt really warrants.

I have fabric chosen to make several more. They are addictive, due to the ease of construction, the total surprise of what you end up with, and the general heaping of praise once finished.

About the surprise aspect -- here are a couple of pics of the original fabric to give you an idea of what I mean by this. I made the leftovers into a pillowcase, to coordinate with the quilt. It's a large-repeat fabric from Alexander Henry that is called Inked. Not sure how apparent it is in the photos that these girls are covered in tattoos. They are hot babes, the fabric is hot pink, basically it is so perfect, so me. When you initially choose the fabric for the quilt, you really have no idea what it will end up like. It's sort of like creativity mixed with a surprise party, with a dash of fate. I mean, c'mon, doesn't that sound like a good time?


I've never seen one that is remotely ugly. Really -- do a google search for One Block Wonder photos and you'll see what I mean. They are all stunning. If you want to see some close-ups of the single blocks, go to my flickr page and you can see some (click on them to see them bigger.) They are so fun to sew up -- it's hard to stop once you start, because each triangle leads to something so different and fun and interesting.

Hopefully soon I will get a couple more things made, and out of my sewing queue, and then I will get around to the next quilt.

(In knitting news, I have just turned the heel on the first sock...)