Can you believe it’s May already! There’s so many things I would like to get accomplished this month, and one of them is changing up my Berea quilt.
I wasn’t happy with how my orange peels were coming out, and I definitely don’t want to waste my beautiful Liberty fabrics to keep trying changes! Here’s my blog post on how I was making the orange peels, and here’s a photo below of how they looked once I started sewing the squares together.
Unfortunately, I didn’t calculate my squares properly, so the orange peels were running into the seam allowance. After a lot of brainstorming, I thought maybe that I would change things up and make them into 1/2 hexagons, where the top was the high for the day, and the bottom was the low for the day. I really didn’t like that with the orange peels, only the high temperature for the day was going to be represented.
Since I’ve been on an embroidery kick lately, I thought maybe I would do something with my embroidery machine instead. I downloaded Inkscape, which is a free program, and also downloaded the InkStitch add-on that let’s you design your own embroidery files. Inkscape has a little bit of a learning curve, if you’ve never used Adobe Illustrator, and even if you have, it can be a bit difficult.
Inkstitch has it’s own learning curve, but I thought I had it figured out! Here’s my first attempt at designing something. I followed the manual and made a simple circle with a fill inside. Since this was just going to be a test, I didn’t use stabilizer, and used some leftover red fabric that I had from the backing of a quilt. It did pucker, but I expected that to happen without stabilizer.
It definitely gave me a false sense of accomplishment!! Because as soon as I tried to figure out my half hexies on my own I realized that it was MUCH harder and was going to take more time to master than I wanted to spend on this particular project. I’m sure that with reading the manual more, and playing with smaller projects, I will finally figure out how to make more designs, but now is not the time!
So, then I thought about how the Orlando quilt I’m making is an EPP (English Paper Piecing) project. Hmmm….. Maybe I’ll make the half hexies as EPP and then applique them onto a square.
I cut up a bunch of 1/2 hexies on my Cricut out of card stock to test my theory, and try it out. I love buying EPP templates from Paper Pieces, but when I’m testing out an idea I usually just cut up my own first. EPP Addict is my favorite place to cut files for EPP.
For this experiment I did use the Liberty fabric. I put two half hexies together and hand sewed them together. Then I removed the papers and pinned the hexagon to the background square. Finally, I machine stitched the hexagon to the background square.
I’m happy with how my hand stitches came out, but I’m not 100% happy with the square overall. Next time I might use some Mistyfuse to help position the hexagon on the background square, and to keep it in place while I stitch it down. I’m still not 100% sure this is the how I’m going to move forward with this quilt. Some more research into other ideas is probably in my future!! I am hoping to make a decision by the end of the month on how I’m going to move forward with the Berea temperature quilt.
Even while I’m trying to decide, it is a new month and that means a Zoom call!! I’ll be holding the May Temperature Quilt Zoom call on Saturday, May 11th at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. If you are interested in participating, sign up here. We’ll be discussing our successes, our failures, and answer any questions!
I hope you join in on the Zoom call, and have a wonderful May full of quilting!
Didi
