First and Last

Back in the late 80's Jane-Beth completed a large hexagon quilt. I mentioned this in an earlier post.
When she finished there were a large number of hexagons and many small pieces of fabric unused. It will come as no surprise that I decided I'd have a go at making a quilt too. My 'how difficult can it be?' mode kicked in.

If you've never made a quilt, it's really not that difficult, it just needs patience and perseverance. I started work on my quilt in October 1989 and did not finish it until September 1990. To give you an idea of scale, it's a double bed and the hexagons are 1" on each side.

This was all cut and stitched by hand using English Piecing.
First I had to cut the paper templates for the hexagons. The cotton fabric then had to be marked. This required a second template slightly larger than the papers. (You can make you own, but templates are available at any quilting supply shop.) Once it was marked the cotton had to be cut and basted over the paper  templates, folding the seams over the paper to give a good straight edge. Lets not say this is mindlessly boring, but with a little practice you can park your brain and catch up on all those TV programmes you've recorded.

This was always meant to be a purely functional quilt so I put the hexagons together in a random fashion. The only 'order' I applied was to avoid having two hexagons of the same fabric together, except along the top where I put in my initials and the dates. The hexagons were joined by hand, another slow and laborious procedure, but needing little enough concentration and providing more opportunities to catch up on the TV, watch videos or hold a conversation. I joined the hexagons in blocks of 8 by 8, then joined the blocks together into larger (16 by 16) sections and so on until the top was complete.

Then came the fun bit of removing the basting and the papers.

When the top was completed I made a sandwich of the top, the wadding and the backing fabric and basted that together. It needs space, but what a good reason for moving back all that furniture and giving the carpet a good clean.

A quilt is not a quilt without quilting. I needed to quilt it and I did not have a quilting frame. My ingenious (?) solution was to hang it over an old wooden gate-leg clothes horse. It worked, except that I had to do most of the quilting standing up. Word of advice, don't try this!

What did this teach me?
Patience for a start. I think only the thought of the wasted time and fabric stopped me giving up, but I learned to persevere too.
Accuracy. As I put the hexagons together I learned that it was vital to double and triple check that the points of all the hexagons meet the points of their neighbours. Even a single out of place point or uneven edge shouts at you from a distance.
Portability. If you make a quilt top in small sections the part you are working on can be quite easily carried about.
That I would never make another quilt. (Don't laugh.)