Quilting Down the River

(Typing that post heading got that stupid CCR song stuck in my head. Rats.)

I got a nice start on quilting my nanohex river today. I did some simple straight lines in the center of each river piece, and started some rice stitching -- by hand!! -- in the lower right corner. I have a great collection of Sulky Blendables for this process, so I'm switching colors as I move through different segments. The very gradual variegation adds another subtle element to the color gradation across the quilt. The rice stitching looks nifty in the "veg" and "sand" areas, but I'm not sure I'll continue it through the lighter parts of the sunset sky.

Hand quilting!

I need to settle on a name for this quilt since I will be finalizing the quilt show program over the next few days.

River!! (Thing 3)

Nanohexie piecing is finished!! (Not sure when I made the mental adjustment from micro- to nano-, but I think it's a fair scale indicator.)

That's 1,107 hexies for those keeping track at home.

The photo is rather blown out; in person, the colors really blend beautifully, and somehow I think I actually pulled off a sense of the sunset reflecting and brightening just a small area of "beach." Nonetheless, I think I'm going to shade those gray rocks a little to lessen their focus, and of course I still have to quilt the whole thing. I finally made the jump onto Pinterest (well, a little toe-dabbling perhaps) and found a great way to finish the edges while retaining the neat crenellated shape. Not much more now! I'm very eager to get this finished, because I'm excited to start working on our group's next project.

Sewin' Hexies Like a BOSS

Behold the sky!

Micro-hexie SKY (24" wide)

Definitely in the homestretch now...but for a few days, my fingers are taking a break for some larger-scale projects.

Flowing along

My fingers are a little sore, but my mental state is optimistic after a week of sewing together microhexies:

Sunset over the river...taking shape!

River progress (Catching up, step 1)

Have you missed me, my quilting peeps? (There must be at least five of you out there!) My teaching semester ended today, so it's time for a full-on dive into summer stitchery. I have several commission projects to finish up and share, a finished Jethro Gibbs top, a few birthday shirts (one done, one waiting for a boy-free house to be sewn), projects for the quilt classes that I'm teaching, and a few other odds and ends waiting for my attention as well. Here's the current state of my River Challenge project; I'll be stitching together the sunset hexies starting tonight!

River Challenge micro-hexies

Micro Hex update

I haven't posted an update in a while on my teensy hexagon river project. I started by cutting one strip of 11 paper templates, then cutting one fabric snippet, basting it, and sewing it on. One. At. A. Time. This did not go quickly. My new strategy is much different -- I have decided to do only one task at a time, so I have been alternating between cutting big piles of paper templates, rough cutting stacks of fabric hexagons, and basting the fabric onto the papers until I can't stand holding the needle anymore. My thinking behind this (other than working more efficiently) is that I will be able to arrange the different colors like a jigsaw puzzle to make a scene emerge. I am concentrating mostly on natural-colored batiks, but that runs a pretty broad gamut from rocky landscape to magenta sunset. I love moving back and forth from bright corals to forest greens. I have to confess, though, that combing through the quilt shop trash cans for even the scantest scraps (even smaller than an inch square!!) is making me feel like a quilting hobo. I got my camera back yesterday so I'm finally able to share a photo of what I've got so far:

The micro-hex river landscape is starting to shape up!

Sisyphean River

I made myself a tiny design board for my micro-hex river project today:

3/8" per side. Yes, I am insane.

River group project

My art quilting group is working on a group project, in which we are making a series of quilts with a continuous river running through all of them; we are all using the same fabric as the river, a lovely dark navy with lines and circles that look like flowing water:

our watery river batik

 I, in what can only be described as a temporary break with insanity, have decided that I want to make my 18 x 24" quilt using tiny hexagons, so it will look in the end something like a hex-grid mosaic gameboard. I will be English paper piecing these (which means by hand, for those of you who might be uninitiated in the jargon of this process). Here is one hexagon basted onto its paper backing:

Yes, these hexes are only .375" on a side.

And here is my progress after yesterday and today:

If I have calculated correctly, I will need about 1167 of these micro-hexies to complete the project. But hey...it's not due until June!