Reset and Restart

Hello everyone!

It has been a few weeks since I posted my weekly update 😔. It has been a tough time personally, and I wasn’t able to sew much physically and emotionally. I am recovering well each day though, and I can do some little things in my sewing room now. I am so glad I enjoy sewing. Sewing has been really helpful to overcome this difficult time. And, I thank God for encouraging and strengthening me each day with his words.

1. Hexagon Flowers (English Paper Piecing)

With my weak body condition, I found that hand sewing was the only option for me for a while. What would be the easiest project for hand work? I figured Hexagons! Not only I could use up scrap fabrics, but also pretty 😍!

Although I made a mistake (of course!) using a regular glue stick and card stock (I printed the template at home) to hold the shape. The card stock really kept the shape sharp and neat. But, it turned out that the glue stick was A LOT stronger than I thought! 😅 After stitching hexagons, It wasn’t easy to take the card stock out because the fabric was glued so well!

I really like the idea of using scrap fabric and adding hexagons to my quilt projects. So, I ended up ordering precut iron-on hexagons that you can leave on the fabric after piecing and, of course, fabric glue sticks 😂. I will share how it goes with them!

2. Curating fabrics using my own stash

Still not able to do much, one thing I could try was organizing my fabric stash. It is funny that whatever fabrics that I have in my drawer are the ones I didn’t like 😂. So, I just didn’t know what to do with them, so kept them there for years!

And, it was the time to save them by giving them some TLC. Since one of my goals for this year is curating my own fabric selection, I decided to start with what I have already. And, I couldn’t (and can’t still) go to fabric stores anyway…

To curate fabrics, I used a color wheel to find coordinating colors. Then, I examined the individual colors in the fabric to find matching ones.

So, here are some examples I did. See what you think 🤔

I can’t wait to use them for my next project!

3. Flower Power Completed!

Finally, I finished Flower Power quilt 🙌. I started this project in March 2021, and here we go!

I really enjoyed painting the flowers instead of appliquéing. It was stress free process. But, quilting was a bit tricky. Most of the quilting designs are very small that it wasn’t easy to manipulate the quilt on my domestic sewing machine. And, I was nervous to use my long arm machine for micro quilting too. Anyway, I used both machines, but most of work is done on the long arm machine. I started with Aurifil 50w black thread. But, it started breaking on the long arm so often, I couldn’t continue with it. So, I switched it to Gutermann polyester thread, which worked great on the both domestic and long arm. However, I would try 40w next time to add more texture.

4. New Block Coming Soon!

My second block is almost ready to be shared 🥳 . It is called ‘Wishes’, and I love this design. My blocks are beginner friendly, and for each block I try to integrate new skills. In this block, I used Half Square Triangle, Flying Geese, and Square in a Square.

You will see the completed block and tutorial soon!