Union Jack Pillow

I bought some Liberty of London for Target scarves and mens boxer shorts with the intention of re-using the fabrics. The red, blue, and white fabrics from the mens boxer shorts made me think of a flag, but I couldn't make a Texas or US flag with Liberty prints, so I made a Union Jack. I'm going to imagine that I bought it at a flea market in London.

The pillow front is 100% linen and the back is Kona Stone.  It turned out exactly as I imagined, but there's a problem. Did you spot it? 

Maybe it's odd to display the flag of another country in your home, but I do love London and Scotland is fabulous. I haven't had the privilege of visiting Ireland, but it's on my list. Plus, my great-great-grandfather was born in Scotland, so I'm a tiny bit Scottish. I think it's the Scottish in me that makes me love chips and brown sauce so much!  Brown sauce rocks!

So, did you find the problem yet? Someone from the UK or Australia will likely spot it more readily than I did. This flag was my first time to try a foundation paper piecing pattern. I didn't realize that it would create a mirror image of the pattern. In this case the St. Patrick's cross (Ireland; the red X), is in the wrong quadrant of the St. Andrew's cross (Scotland; the white X). See that top left quadrant? The larger portion of white should be above the red, not below it. Every quadrant is wrong all the way around. I wanted to show it to you, but I needed to acknowledge that it's incorrect because I know someone will notice. The error was unintentional and I meant no disrespect. But I still like my new pillow made from mens underwear!

ETA - Lynz has the perfect solution!  My flag is being viewed from the other side of the flagpole, the non-hoist side! Thanks for the information, Lynz! 

One Inch Hex Starter Pack Giveaway!

Are you brave enough to tackle the one inch hexagon?  C'mon, you know you want to!

To get someone started, I've put together a little one inch hexagon starter pack. It contains 100, 2.5" squares of printed fabric and a package of 100 die cut 1" hexagons. What a great way to get started on your charm quilt or to use in a smaller project.

While the majority of these fabrics are unwashed (I'm not a die-hard pre-washer; don't hate on me), they are all quality quilting cottons from great designers. There's some older Amy Butler and even some Flea Market Fancy in there! 

Want to win? 

1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. If you want another chance to win, become a follower of my blog and leave a second comment. If you are already a follower, leave a second comment to let me know that too.

I'll draw a winner on Friday, March 26th and I'm willing to ship it anywhere.

While you are here, check out the Hexagon Charm Quilt Piece-Along here and over at flickr. Good luck!

Hexagon Charm Quilt Piece-Along

Ok, here it is!  My first quilt-along!

Let's make hexagon charm quilts!  A charm quilt is a quilt in which no two fabrics are alike. (Read more about charm quilts here.) I'm not going to be working on a strict timeline, but we can keep each other motivated by sharing our progress and I'll offer hexagon tips and helpful links I find along the way.

The details:

• I've started a flickr group for the Hexagon Charm Quilt Piece-Along. Join and start sharing your photos! It's also a place where we can organize scrap swaps and discuss our hexagon addictions.
• Grab a piece-along button over there --> in the sidebar for your blog. Get someone else addicted!
• I'm making a throw sized quilt with one inch hexagons. For a 50 x 60" throw, I'll need 1,173 hexagons.  How many hexagons will you need to make your throw sized quilt? Check below.

• I'm a designer by day, so I've made a couple of download pages that you might find helpful. Clicking on the images below will immediately begin the download from mediafire.com Google Groups. If you have trouble with the link or download, please let me know.

 

This is a sheet of "Easy Cut" one inch hexagons. I had been using the hexagon generator, but I found it cumbersome to cut out the nested hexagons. Using this sheet you can quickly cut your hexagons out in squares and then just snip off the corners.

If you use a paper cutter to cut out the squares first (along the dotted lines),

snipping the corners will go even faster!

The page above is for 1.5" hexagons.  (Just click to download it.) With hexagons larger than 1.5", only a couple fit on a page, so it's easy to cut them out; just use the hexagon generator. With both sheets, ensure that your printer is set to print at 100% and check your scale before you cut ! You don't want to make some strange sized hexies, do you? 

• Haven't made hexagons yet? I complied some helpful links in this post.
• Just for fun, I made some coloring pages.  Print one out for the quilt you want to make and visually keep up with your progress.

Hummmm... I seem to have a long way to go.

Download links for the coloring sheets:

1" Hexagons

1.5" Hexagons

2" Hexagons

Lastly, I have one other request. This is my first quilt-along, so please be gentle with me. I've checked these numbers and downloads over and over to make sure that there are no mistakes, but alas, I'm human and it's very possible I've overlooked something. If you see anything that looks strange, please let me know and I will do my best to get it corrected as soon as possible. My email address is at the top of my sidebar.

Whew! I'm tired and I haven't made a single hexagon today!  I'll be back later with a little giveaway to get someone started and some hexagon basics! 

Pop Garden New Wave Quilt

When I saw Elizabeth's New Wave Quilt pattern at Oh Fransson!, I immediately thought of the zig-zag stripe in my Heather Bailey Pop Garden stash.

I love the way this quilt turned out!  I've been hanging on to these fabrics waiting for the right pattern for them and I think this one was perfect.

I found the pattern very quick and easy and I would definitely use it again for a quick quilt. It's raining outside, but I wanted to photograph this so badly, I hung it on the fence in the rain.  If I have a nice sunny day soon, I'll take some prettier photos and replace these.

My only suggestion if you are going to make this quilt is that you cut the 2" sashing strips into four equal pieces (2" x 4/WOF) rather than trim them down to 2 x 10". There were a couple of places where the strip needed to be further to one side of the wedge than the other and if I hadn't trimmed them down, I would have had extra fabric on each end. Hopefully that will make sense as you are making the pattern.

It's a little hard to see the stitching in this photo (click on it to see the bigger version), but I usually avoid this type of stitching because I'm, afraid of waving puckers. In this case, it worked beautifully! I also used Warm & White for the first time since I have a solid white back and I love the pure white. It's not even the slightest bit yellow.

Thanks to Elizabeth for a fabulous new pattern!

Weekend Shopping

My mom and I went to the Dallas Quilt Show yesterday.  I found the things on my list and more.

YLI hand quilting thread, 1" pre-cut hexagon papers, and some great FQ finds...

including buying out of all the Peas & Carrots fabric from a rural Texas quilt shop!

Because of an alarm clock/daylight savings time mishap, we missed church this morning.  I hope that the Lord doesn't mind that I went to Target rather than being an hour late for church. I picked up some things for my sewing room,

a nightie for me, some sundresses for my me and my daughter, and an un-pictured shirt and boxers for the hubby.

And, a couple of cute totes.  It was very hard to exercise restraint.  Very hard.

I'm out of batting, so I can't finish this up the New Wave quilt until I do some more shopping, 

but, I'm loving the way it's coming together!