hexagons in progress

[dragonlady7]

The only purple fabric I could easily find in my discards/scraps stash was stretch jersey, and I don't have to know a lot to know that's not really ideally suited to quilting.
So I decided to hand-sew it, along with some other tricky bits and scraps, to some non-stretch backing fabric, the lining of a skirt I deconstructed over the weekend.

I also seamed a too-small scrap of brocade to a strip of unrelated scrap fabric, and then tacked the seam allowance down in gold glitter thread.
So there's my little stash of over-elaborate hexagons for today.
(I remembered to find my scissors and thread, so.)

Comments

[wyomingnot]

I missed where you said what you're doing with the hexes.... well, I know you haven't really figured it out.

But I don't understand why you're attaching them to paper...

[dragonlady7]

Oh the paper is to make them be hexagons. It's a technique called English Paper Piecing, and it's a way to make sure the corners stay corners. It's apparently quite an old technique-- they found an example of it in progress among Emily Dickinson's papers, she'd cut some paper up into scraps and had a set of six of them made of scraps of fabric, including some of the same fabric a figure is wearing in a photograph that they figured out had to be her because of this.
If you just piece hexagonal bits of fabric together they tend not to keep their shape, according to basically all the tutorials I found when I searched for more information about it. So... the accepted practice is just to bind your fabric around paper templates, and then join them together, and then when you've got them all together you can go back and pop the paper back out.

[wyomingnot]

Okay then. I have learned something new today.

All your talk of patchwork has turned on some lights in my brain. I've got some fabric and a sewing machine and am hopefully going to start on *something* soon. ;) Nothing by hand, oh heck no.

[dragonlady7]

Well, good! :)

I have some plans to do some machine-sewing today, too. I just find the handwork satisfying, and my sewing machines are perpetually malfunctioning. I need to get me a solid garage-sale 70s metal machine that does straight stitch and zigzag and nothing else!

[wyomingnot]

I don't have the patience for hand sewing. :( I learned that first, of course, but then I learned to use a sewing machine, and there's just no coming back from that for me. Same thing with spinning. I learned on a drop spindle, but after seeing folks with a wheel and then trying it myself? Spindles have become decorations. (I've got a very cool doctor who themed one)

I found out on my last trip home that my mom sold her ancient metal singer at some point. I was so upset. I still can't believe she didn't even ask if I wanted it! It's not like it took up that much space!

But yeah. Those old, solid machines can't be beat. The last sewing machine I had stateside was one I picked up used at a sewing machine/vacuum cleaner repair place. Do those even exist anymore, I wonder...

[dragonlady7]

I just find hand sewing really meditative and soothing. You don't have to know what you're doing, you can just kind of fuck up and keep going back over that spot to fix your fuckup, and it's way easier to catch on that you're about to fuck up than it is on machine. But it's super time consuming and not that satisfying therefore, from a productivity standpoint. Also it's uselessly slow and not that good if you're working on a long seam-- a machine will give a cleaner result unless you're like, super conscientious, so it's not worth making large items with hand-sewing. But for short seams and fiddly things and anything where the thread will show afterward (like an overcast stitch, or anything embroidered, or the quilting bit instead of the piecing), or for joining two finished items like with a whip-stitch, it's worth doing, so I let myself do it.

My sister has a beautiful Featherweight that she got tuned up and it failed castatrophically afterward, so I might make one more attempt to figure out what's wrong with it but it's gonna have to go back to the shop.
I have an ancient straight-stitch machine that works, but I left it at the farm. I have two modern electronic machines and one does embroidery so I leave it set up for that but it does a shitty job and basically doesn't work, and the other doesn't do embroidery but also doesn't fucking work. I can do a straight-stitch on it if it's in a good mood. It needs reconditioning but it's been in the shop more than I've used it, for its entire life, and I'm super disillusioned with it. Oh well, it's a piece of shit.

There are still sewing machine repair and vacuum shops around! They're a dying breed though. I can't even strike up a good relationship with a local quilt shop, those come and go like summer leaves.

Dude's mom and sister, between them, own like fifteen sewing machines, and are garage sale champions, so I might just. Ask them to keep an eye out for me. I don't want an old straight-stitch only, I have one of those, I want one that does basic zig-zag because I do just enough stuff that requires it-- and that is the thing that my expensive broken electronic machine can't do. It's got 99 stitches, and zig-zag (number 3) doesn't work.