A good friend (and amazing art therapist) came over last night for dinner and was tooling around in my workspace. She illuminated the fatal flaw from the pie charts. Several of you also pointed it out. (Leslie, Victoria, I’m looking at you.)

Integration is the key. Combining. Overlapping. Interlocking. I am better focused now after speaking with her. I have clarity again. I remember my bigger-picture goals and I feel like i’m back on track.

• Taking a walk with a friend and bringing the dogs along, rather than always just going out to dinner = fun + chores + health.
• Photographing a project I do for work, or bleeding the project out into one of my own journal quilts or blog entries = work + creativity + fun.
• Taking the stairs, avoiding the cookie counter at work, and planning ahead for snacks = work + health.

At least I made sure not to overlap the dating stripe into the work wedge. Some things just aren’t made for integrating.

 A new journal quilt, titled “Membership.”  It’s sized around 12″x12″ and was one of the many that I sketched/designed before going on hiatus for my licensure exam.

My next exam is scheduled for this Friday. Oy.

I’m experimenting with new ways to attach the title to the quilt. This is permanent marker on a strip of ribbon, hand-stitched into the binding. The flip side shows the date, ”August, 2009.”

I’ve been using “throw-away” fabric for the backs of these journal quilts — the less it matches the quilt itself, the better. I’m a little bit thrilled to realize that I subconsciously chose a fabric for this cheeky quilt that matches the favorite pajama pants of my ex-boyfriend. I’m just sayin’. You do the math. Membership.

Against all odds, I passed my exam yesterday. Thank you for all the well-wishes, public and private.

I’ve got one more exam to take for my license, and will likely attempt that one in a few weeks.

Hopefully I can get back to normal for 10 days or so before the freakout starts again and release some of those ideas that are bursting at the seams.

PS: I passed.

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1. Purpose, re-purpose

It’s been a bit of a rough patch at work. I know that this kind of thing is to be expected when you work at a hospital or hospice. (PS: “This kind of thing” is death and, whether we like to talk about it or not, death is to be expected for all of us.)

One of the things I like best about my job is that it keeps me constantly aware of the brevity of life, the preciousness of every day, and the power of human connection. I process these big emotions in my art journal, as always. The image above was done in the subway on my way home from work one evening last week.

Bodies and health have been much on my mind recently, and not just because of work. I’m trying to return to better eating habits and nutrition (you may recall), so naturally these themes are showing up in my journals, too.

It is my life’s struggle to explore my relationship to food and its effects (positive and negative) on my body. This image was made as I contemplated last year’s dramatic and successful loss of 80 pounds, and post-medical-crisis plateau in weight. There I stand, a little figure on the precipice of the plateau, wondering how to jump off into the next phase of health.

Thankfully, my journal often reveals answers when I ask it questions.

What about you? Do you journal?

One of the personal issues I have dealt with over the years is a form of disordered eating. These struggles become pronounced whenever I have extended or intensified contact with my family, as I’ve had recently.

I’m happy to say that although I’ve mostly been able to get my binge-eating under control, I still slip into patterns of unhealthy eating choices when faced with stress. I eat out, neglect proper nutrition, and generally choose convenience and comfort over actual self-care.

My recent indulgence has been a treat from Cold Stone Creamery. Unfortunately, the “Ice Cream Dinner” became all too common in these past few weeks, as I compulsively ordered and ate “Founder’s Favorite with chocolate base, please add marshmallows and could I get that in a sprinkle bowl?”

When I needed to turn this ship around, I started to journal about it. I journal about everything that is on my mind, and this was definitely something that I needed to explore.

And, in fact, one evening this week, rather than engage in the behavior, I decided to make a journal quilt about it instead. This is also my submission for this week’s Mini Quilt Monday.

I used Dale Fleming’s pieced circle technique for the first time, and found that it worked perfectly for this purpose.

I even pieced the fabric of the “waffle” to represent the waviness of that crunchy bowl of artery-clogging death.

At least making this quilt kept me from actually having an Ice Cream Dinner for a few nights. Maybe I can finally put this bad habit to bed.

I still haven’t attached the beads to represent the sprinkles. What do you think? Beads? No beads?

I picked up my band sampler again last week, and scanned the list of embroidery stitches I intend to learn and/or practice. Not to be all emo-14-year-old, but the chain stitch jumped out at me as a nice way to reflect the experience of the past month.

I free-handed the text and stitched it on the subway to and from work for a few days using Sharon B‘s hand-dyed mulberry silk. The variagation is so vivid! I really enjoyed the process.

I was surprised at how well the chain stitch handled curves, but a little disappointed in starts-and-stops. Still, I got good practice with it.

If you’re interested in giving chain stitch a try, here are some good tutorials:

• Mary Corbet‘s brilliant chain stitch video.
• Purlbee has good instructions with photos.
• Erika Kern shows you how on Craftystylish.
• Primrose Design teaches chain stitch and also twisted chain stitch.
• SharonB‘s instructions are excellent as always.

One of the benefits of my job as an art therapist is that even when my personal life is crazy and I don’t carve out time for creativity in my off-hours, I’m required to be creative from day-to-day in my professional life.

When I found a “Fashion Origami” kit on sale for $1.50 at Urban Outfitters, I snapped it up. Origami is a project which, although there may be low potential for emotional expression, is a good rapport-builder and ice-breaker. Particularly in the hospital, where patients don’t have a lot of energy, they can do a little folding project on their lap and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Naturally, the first project I folded from the book was a paper bra. I had to learn this one first. Do you have any idea how many teen boys are on my caseload?

After I folded the grey suit, I couldn’t help but fold a red tie to go with it. “Mr. Herman. Paging Mr. Herman! Mr. Herman, you have a telephone call at the front desk.“ It should be a bow tie, but still.

I (and all my staff) have had a hard time deciphering the instructions for the stiletto shoe, but here we have found a reasonable alternative. It still stands on its own and opens up where the foot should go. That’s good enough for me! Creative problem solving at its finest.

Several people have asked about the techniques we used when cleaning out my mom’s fabric stash last week. There are of course many ways to purge, sort, and organize fabric, which I’ll write about later. But first, I wanted to address questions about the folding station and the folding method we used.

It’s the same method I’ve been using as I’ve been sorting and organizing fabric in my own apartment. Here you see an in-progress picture of my new studio corner with stacks of uniformly-folded fabric. This is a method I first read about from Monica, the Happy Zombie and later from Marilyn Bohn’s video.

Of course there are other ways, but this is the cheap, easy, quick one that works for me. The goal is to end up with a stack of fabric that is uniformly folded — the same length and width.

The height of each folded piece varies according to how much yardage you have to begin with.

To accomplish this, you’ll need a stack of fabric (45″ wide works best, though other widths can be accommodated), a flat surface, and a large quilter’s ruler. My mom had three 6.5″-wide rulers, so we defaulted to using those for her project. However, the cubbies on my shelf are 13″ wide. In order to comfortably fit 2 stacks of fabric side-to-side, I needed to use a slightly smaller ruler. Mine is 6″ wide and 24″ long.

I don’t currently have any fabric that hasn’t been folded by this method, so I had to un-fold a piece to show you how it’s done. Pardon the creases!

First, ensure that the fabric is folded in half lengthwise (selvedge-to-selvedge) with the wrong sides together. Many fabrics (including most quilter’s cotton) are approximately 45″ wide, which leaves you with a span of fabric around 22″ after it’s folded in half. For my ruler of 24″, this is just perfect. It leaves a little bit of ruler poking out on either end.

Begin “wrapping” the fabric around the ruler, starting with the raw edge nearest to you. It’s almost like you’re making a small “bolt” of fabric with the quilter’s ruler where the cardboard core would be.

Continue wrapping (flipping the ruler away from you) until you reach the other raw edge of the fabric. At this point, you have two options.

If the remaining edge is wide enough, you can just fold it over. However, if that edge piece is too small and won’t lie flat, there is another option.

If the last wrapped edge is too small to lie flat, unfold the bolt of fabric and tuck the edge under. Then, flip the bolt on top of the fold and it will seal the edge up into the wraps of fabric.

Pull the ruler out from the center of the fabric. Make sure that it lies flat and the raw edge doesn’t pop out.

Fold the fabric in half cross-wise. (Hamburger fold, not hotdog.)

Place your folded fabric on the shelf with the folded edge facing you. that way, you can see at a glance what colors of fabric you’ve got.

You can see that the finished piece is a little larger than 6″ wide, and about 11″ long. This will vary depending on your ruler, so make sure you understand your shelves or storage spaces before you have to unfold your whole collection!

A lot of people store their fat quarters separate from the rest of their fabric collection. My mom wanted hers kept separate, so we did what Monica Zombie suggested and folded the fat quarters in the same way but with a smaller ruler. I prefer to keep my fabric all together, since I’m generally hunting for fabric of a certain color, rather than of a certain size.

A fat quarter is generally around 18″ x 22″. Using my 6″ ruler allows me to make a tidy little bolt and store all of my fabric in one place.

Fold one edge in…

Then the other.

Just as before, remove the ruler and fold in half.

Voila! If you’re starting with 60″ fabric, vintage sheets, or other odd-sized pieces, the procedure is the same. All you have to do is fold it lengthwise (hotdog, not hamburger) to approximately 20-24″ wide before you begin wrapping. For a 60″ piece, I generally just fold it in thirds lengthwise and it pretty much evens out in the end.

Be aware that extra yardage (3+ yards) will yield pieces that are noticeably wider due to the sheer bulk of fabric as you wrap around and around. You may need to take this into account as you plan out the size of your storage system.

A final thought: This sytem really only works if you are dedicated to maintainence. I’ll post later about my system for re-folding pieces after I have used them. However, I find that the investment of time really pays off.

This method is becoming increasingly popular, but hopefully my tutorial will add something to the conversation. Let me know if you try it out!

I got lots of questions about the quilting detail on the 100th Post Giveaway mini quilt. Some thought it was a simple square motif. However, you can see from the illustration above that it is a bit more complex than that. The shape is almost like a 4-leafed clover, with intersection-points in the center of each cartwheel. You can start at any point on the motif and quilt in a continuous line until you reach that point again.

Here’s the view from the front.

The mini-quilt was machine quilted, but I think this motif would work equally well with hand-quilting.

Stay tuned! The winner of this mini-quilt will be announced tomorrow.

There’s a saying in family therapy that each member of a family lives in a different family than every other member of the family. That is to say that each person’s perspective, their relationships to the other family members, and their unique experiences gives every family member their own story.

What does that have to do with my mini hexagon quilt project?

See, it’s not only my goal to make more things, but also to make more meaning with my creative endeavors. As an art therapist, it was natural for me to wonder if there was any meaning underpinning my hexagon phase. Maybe that sounds like a strange thing to say — hundreds and thousands of you are out there with your own hexagon quilts and that thought probably never crossed your  mind.

But the way the project seized me in the spring, the way I dove in headfirst and pushed the project into all of my spare moments, and the times and places when making hexagons became most important to me all added up to this: maybe there’s something there.

I’m the 2nd of 7 children. My parents are still married and my siblings all get along fairly well. No one is disowned or giving the silent treatment to anyone else. All in all, compared with other families I know, I can say we are doing pretty well. Still, you can’t grow up in a family of 9 without it affecting you profoundly and there are certain, recent family circumstances — intense shifting of roles, jockeying for position, new alliances where there was once tension — that may have made this hexagon project take on an extra meaning for me.

You may remember that the hexagons hit me full force during a time when we were dealing with the state of my parents’ house (including my mother’s fabric hoarding), when armies of my siblings were descending for “clean-out days” and some of the fallout was reaching all the way to my apartment, two states away. The hexagons came to me during my brother’s engagement and were in full force when I went to his wedding.

And then it hit me. Here we have a hexagon — a 6-sided shape. Each hexagon connects to 6 other hexagons. Each has 6 sides, 6 corners, and a center. No single group of rleationships has been so important in my life as the relationships I have to my 6 siblings. Hmm…

Since having this realization a couple of months ago, I have come to believe that the slow, soothing process of stitching hexagons is my way of processing adult relationships with my siblings. It is the way that I have kept some of my anxieties (about the changing face of our family) at bay. It brings me back to my childhood, when my world revolved around these 6 strangers.

I believe that hexagon fever held meaning about my siblings long before I realized it. But, if you’re a skeptic, you might wonder about a chicken-and-the-egg effect. Do the hexagons hold meaning on their own? Or have I simply foisted meaning onto them by thinking about my siblings? Either way, the articulation of that potential meaning has psychologically connected this project to my sibling relationships, and I now think of them more frequently, more specifically, and more fondly each time I stitch a seam. When I connect two pieces together, I think about the connections I have with these 6 wonderful, crazy, frustrating people. I think about how we have evolved as adults, how our relationships get closer for a while, or weaker for a season, but how we always come back to center.

As my project starts to come together, these thoughts and feelings intensify. Sometimes it takes a little hunting, but I love to discover this kidn of meaning in my work. Knowing that these meanings come through in my own personal work makes my professional work as an art therapist even more powerful. I truly believe in what I do, and that’s such a privilege and a blessing in my life.

Here’s my contribution to the Phat Quarter recent swap. The theme was anatomy.

I wanted mine to look like an x-ray film, a bit blurry and fuzzy. So I used a single strand of embroidery floss and did a sloppy stem-stitch to give the effect.

At times it was a bit surreal — spooky, even — to look down and see my hand in the same position as the ghost hand, and to ponder the bones and veins beneath the skin. It was a pretty cool process, I have to say.

I even like how the hand looks as though it is sewing down its own binding.

I’m sure my choice of an x-ray image is partially motivated by my work at a hospital. Hope Ben likes it!

Last week, I wrote about eliminating or reducing input from one of my senses — vision. As part of these experiments, I’ve been taking showers at night with the lights off. Although the idea is to reduce the chatter of visual input, the experience is still visual: the way the moon hangs in the upper corner of the window, the silhouette outline of the neighbor’s tree against the night sky, the invisible (but present) droplets. I love how the moon makes a halo of light around itself. It all adds up to a calming and soothing experience. I think I have finally found my insomnia buster.

I think I’ve also found a way to bind mini quilts into a book. The Art Journaler and Book Binder in me is so excited! Journal quilts! In an actual journal! Awesome.

This is my submission for Malka’s (of A Stitch in Dye) Mini Quilt Monday.

I had been randomly stitching hexagons with whatever scrap fabric I could find. The result was a large collection of tiny, penny-sized hexes but no intended design.

I got to feeling a little bit lost in the project, so I printed off a hexagon page (from the graph-paper generator) and got to work with some colored pencils. Now I have some order and a direction. Now, with some structure, I am able to begin the long process of joining the pieces together and creating something cohesive.

I’m using the ladder stitch to join the into little flowers. It’s awesome because you can barely see the line of stitches. They are all hidden away — tucked into the folds and creases of fabric. They hold things together, but you don’t think much about them. This is a very interesting concept, psychologically.

Sometimes you want your stitches to show. Jude of Spirit Cloth writes about intentionally showing stitches on her What If blog.

For some reason, on this project, I want to hide them away. I think it has something to do with my process on this blog, actually — the way I reveal some things, but not all things, about myself and my work. Even still, burying the process a little bit from time to time is valid as an artistic and therapeutic choice.

What about you? Are you in the mood to show your process, or hide it? Visible or invisible seams?

I finally figured out what was wrong with my mini-hexagon project. Don’t worry. It wasn’t anything major — only the whole entire concept from top to bottom.

Fortunately I was able to switch it up pretty easily and get back on track. I also gained some good insight into some of the reasons why those hexagons have been compelling me so fiercely for the past few months. I’ll let you know more about that later.

For now, here are a few thoughts on what to do when a project goes awry.

First, from Annie Dillard‘s book The Writing Life. This wonderful book is, you guessed it, a book about the writing process. However, there is plenty about general creativity to be gained here. Please don’t feel too badly about extrapolating from writing instructions for your knitting, pot-throwing, jewelry-making, or other pursuits. A quick jaunt over to Annie’s website reveals that she herself has been painting in recent years. Go, Annie, go.

The line of words is a hammer. You hammer against the walls of your house. You tap the walls, lightly, everywhere. After giving many years’ attention to these things, you know what to listen for. Some of the walls are bearing walls; they have to stay, or everything will fall down. Other walls can go with impunity; you can hear the difference. Unfortunately, it is often a bearing wall that has to go. It cannot be helped. There is only one solution, which appalls you, but there it is. Knock it out. Duck.

…You must demolish the work and start over. You can save some of the sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some of the paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves or hard-won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now. (Are you a woman, or a mouse?)

The part you must jettison is not only the best-written part; it is also, oddly, that part which was to have been the very point. It is the original key passage, the passage on which the rest was to hang, and from which you yourself drew the courage to begin.

There is a well-known quote of unknown origin. It is often attributed to Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or William Faulkner. (Does anyone have compelling proof of authorship?)

Kill your darlings.

No, don’t slip cyanide into your children’s chocolate milk. Instead, be willing to part with (slice off, scrub out, or frog) your very favorite part of a piece of art. If you’ve been laboring on any one aspect for too long, it runs the risk of becoming precious, overdone, and (for lack of a better term) priced out of its own market. It could be the very thing that is weighing you down.

And this, from Samuel Johnson:

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Here are a few more essays about the idea of killing your darlings, and an interesting sampling of creative media which appear to benefit from the advice.

• By Brenda Coulter (novelist)
• By Ben Corman (novelist)
• By Jay Fields (computer programmer)
• By John Douglas Porter (software designer)
• By Emil Schildt (photographer)
• By Diana Peterfreund (writer)

What about you? Have you? Would you? Could you? Should you?

Enough with the bellyaching already. Just because I can’t set up my sewing machine in the kitchen, or an easel for painting or anything else, doesn’t mean that I can’t get back to the business of creating. Thanks to some good advice from you guys and my own private butt-kicking, I’m back to it.

For instance, I had spent all that time describing how I can take my hexagon project on the road. There’s no excuse for not working on those just because my apartment is upheaved. Here are some cell-phone-cam shots of me working on hexagons in various places last week:

At the laundromat.

On the subway.

In my office. (Shhh… It was lunch hour, mostly.)

I also pulled out my art journal on the subway the other day and was a bit surprised to find that the rectangles I sketched out for drawing quilt ideas turned themselves — suddenly and quite unexpectedly — into a comic strip. Woah, dude. Guess I needed some blatant insight into some of my recent decisions. You can stare at a page all you want and wonder about subtle meanings and nuances until there is a drawing of yourself talking back to you. Yeah. Not so subtle.

What about you? How do you kick-start yourself after a low point in creativity?

Update: Apparently this stitch is called the Ladder Stitch. Personally, I prefer my title for it: Invisible Mamma-Jamma Stitch. While ladder stitch is common to embroidery, applique, and closing up stuffed plush dolls, apparently very few people have applied it to quilt binding. Let me know if you try it!

I mentioned before that my mom had taught me a stitch for quilt binding that was so simple and obvious yet so wonderful that I wanted to share it with you.

The photo above shows the back of my rough draft quilt.

Following the many tutorials and demonstrations online, I whip-stitched the binding to the back of the quilt.

But, as you can see in my photo and the ones above, whip-stitching can leave a very visible line of tiny stitches. In addition to being sort of unsightly, I worried a bit about the stitches getting caught and, God forbid, ripped.

Some people go to great (and creative!) lengths to machine stitch their binding, as seen above. I imagine that at least some of them are frustrated (as I was) with the result of the whip-stitching and looking for alternatives.

When it came time to bind my friend’s baby quilt, I whip stitched the entire thing and hated it. On the phone with my mom (sewing consultant extraordinaire), she said there was a better way and that if I would be willing to re-do it, she would teach me. It only took me 3 evenings to unpick all that stitching, and 3 weeks for her to arrive in town with thread and scissors in hand.

Mom proceeded to teach me the ladder stitch — a stitch that is easy, fast, and nearly invisible! She uses it for both quilt binding and hand applique. I think it would work for any application requiring joining of two fabrics where at least one of them involves a fold.

The basic idea is to think of the shape of a castle wall.

(I work mine from right to left, because I am right-handed. Lefties may wish to mirror-image the process.)

When you tighten up the thread of the castle wall, the bits that were visible disappear into the fabric like this:

So that all that’s left visible on the outside of the fabrics is a tiny dot of thread where the needle has passed from one side to the other. In my experience, you have to really hunt if you want to see that thread. Awesome.

After my brother’s wedding, I took some action shots of my mom teaching the stitch. Hopefully you’ll find it useful!

Start off with the Mamma Jamma knot I already taught you. Then, insert the needle on the back side of the binding to hide the knot. Only go through one layer of the binding, as the goal here is invisibility, man.

When the needle comes out, it should be between the two layers of binding fabric and smack dab in the middle of the crease of the binding’s fold. If you felt like popping the knot through the fabric to bury it, nestling it right into the inside of the binding’s fold, you can do that. My mom didn’t do that, though — you can see the knot poking out on the right if you look at the image below.

Make sure the exit point is directly parallel from where you want to insert your needle into the quilt. Check the diagram above — you shouldn’t have too much diagonal or angled anything while working this stitch. In this case, mom started about a quarter of an inch from the previous stitches, since that’s about how far she spaces this stitch. For my part, I space them a little closer.

Then stitch down straight across from that exit point. Make your stitch just above (on the quilt side, not the edge side) of your line of basting stitches.

Come back into the binding fabric directly across from the previous exit point. You want to stitch right in the fold of the binding, because the thread will ultimately nestle there, perfectly parallel to the fold.

Alternate stitches between the quilt and the binding, always inserting your needle directly across from your previous exit point. Again, refer to the diagram above if you have questions.

When you’ve done a few stitches, gently tighten up the thread. As you do, the stitches will disappear and the whole thing will be held together by thread which is tucked neatly out of sight, buried inside your work. Be careful, though, not to tighten too much — if the quilt stretches more than your stitches, your stitches will break and your binding will come undone.

And voila! The stitches are now only visible if you go looking for them.

Continue along this way until you reach the end of your thread.

To finish off, take a couple of stitches in the quilt, between the basting stitches and the raw edge.

Mom likes to finish hers off by bringing the end of the thread through the loop before tightening the last back stitch to secure it.

And there you have it! If you try this stitch, if something doesn’t make sense and you need more/better explanation, or if you dispute the name of this stitch, please leave it in the comments!

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1. Purpose, re-purpose

I’ve been gone for the past week attending my brother’s wedding. (You probably only noticed if you sent me an email and are waiting for a response!)

Because I was with my mom again, I convinced her to let me take photos of a few of the techniques she’s recently taught me. The first I wanted to share is called the “quilter’s knot” and it makes a much tidier knot than the one I’m used to. Normally, I lick my finger, wrap around and around, and twist it off. The resulting bird’s nest of a knot is unpredictable and, well, ugly.

Not so with this tidy quilter’s knot. Enjoy these photos of my mom’s demonstration.

To begin, hold the needle and the end of the thread so that they are pointing toward each other.

Bring them together to form a cross, then

holding the end of the thread against the needle,

begin wrapping the thread around the shaft of the needle.

Wrap the thread around the needle 3-6 times.

Grasp the wrapped threads snugly between your thumb and forefinger.

Pull the needle through the coil of wrapped threads with your other hand.

You’re still holding the coil between your thumb and forefinger as you pull.

And pull…

And pull, all the way to the end of the thread. When you reach the end, give a good sharp tug to tighten the knot.

And, voila! A tidy little knot will be left there in your hand and you can begin hand sewing with ease.

The nature of textile art lends itself well to the process of grief and bereavement.

You’ve probably heard of the AIDS quilt, where loved ones create quilt blocks in memory of people who have passed away from the disease. When I was in grad school, I was lucky enough to be able to see some of the traveling panels in person. It’s a lovely (and now humongous) project.

Loved ones leave behind many items, but fabrics and textiles are easily repurposed. Sherri Lynn Wood calls them Passage Quilts.

But, cloth homages to our loved ones are not limited only to quilting. Allison Ann Aller of Allie’s in Stitches talks about losing her brother in a tragic accident many years ago. She embroidered her brother’s name subtly onto the beach in a lovely landscape she was making. I love how she described her process (quoted below), and I encourage you to click the link to view the gorgeous images.

This quilt is about many things for me….the place I love best in the natural world, the cottage itself that houses so much of my family’s history, my desire to push the envelope of what my crazy quilting can be…..but it is also about my brother, Freddie. . .

And the waves still lap the shore there, the sun still lights up the water and the woods, and we still find great joy on that porch, where such horrible news was delivered in July of 1958….that’s part of the incredible blessing of a place like Michillinda. It absorbs all the drama of our little lives, it’s unchanging beauty and rhythms give us a sense of perspective, and we have a polestar to refer to when all else is in flux….

So I had to write Freddie’s name in the sand on the beach….

I can’t tell you how wonderful it has felt for me to do this. Now the quilt is saying what it is meant to say in its entirety.

Have you seen, made, or received a memory quilt? Would you consider making one, or do you disagree with the idea of them? Please tell us about it.

Nothing on my list of projects seems to interest people more than the miniature hexagons. Lots of questions have resulted from my posts about this strange, antiquated process. Between blog comments, scuttle over on flickr, and personal emails, there are a lot of good questions going around.

Today I’ll answer some of those questions and hope to help those of you who may be considering this undertaking. Don’t forget, I posted a bunch of tutorials on a previous entry and they are a good place to start.

Several people, including Ralph RSC, have asked:

whats the scale? real size of the cells?

As you can see above, the hexes are just a hair larger in diameter than a US penny coin. I used this awesome graph-paper-generating website to create my paper hexes.

Scroll down a bit to find the hexagon graph. I set mine for .5″ hexes and a .5″ border. If you can’t get the generator to work, I’ve uploaded the resultant page so that you can download it yourself:  Half-inch Hexagon PDF

Also, please note that I am not in a contest to create the smallest mini-hexagons known to man. I just picked a size that “felt right” to me and will look nice in its completed project (someday!). That said, if you want to see some other really mini hexagons, check out Christine’s work here and here (website plays music). Fiesta’s seem to be about the same size as mine. Mini-Mum is into it, too. (Click here to see the tiniest hexagons yet!) And who could forget duniris’s unbelievably amazing hexagon pincushion?

I’m sorry. I think the mini-hexes thing is an illness. Unfortunately, it is contagious!

Leslie commented that:

 Hey! I have just about all of those same prints. That’s *way* cool.

Well, shoot! That is cool, and a little creepy, since most of these fabrics were gifted to me as scrap-bags and cast-offs from 3 different friends and family members. I’ve been combing through those bags for the smallest pieces. I’ve finally found the scrap size that I can throw away — anything too small to be a penny hex.

Melissa asked:

The one thing I’m confused about: do you pull out the papers before you stitch the hexes together or after you’ve basted the hexes? What I mean is, do you need enough paper pieces for an entire project at once or can you just reuse the same 10 or so over and over again for the same project?

You can absolutely re-use the paper hexagons and many quilters do. I haven’t, yet, because I am still unclear about the layout of my hexies and you remove the papers once you start stitching them together. 

The trick is to only remove the papers from the hexagons that are attached on all sides. That is, as long as you don’t intend to sew the hex to any other hex, or all 6 of the sides are stitched to others, you can remove both the paper template and the temporary basting. (I’ve seen that some people don’t remove the basting, either. I probably will.)

Lots of people use heavier weight papers — cereal boxes, cardstock, even plastic templates — to form their shapes. In fact, one of my favorite hexagon stories to date comes from Sue of mousenotebook. She writes about her Great Work, which included:

Hundreds of hexagons carefully cut from birthday cards, magazines, old drawing paper, the scripts of my ex-husband’s novel and my Mum’s book of prayers. . . The last fifteen years of my life are bound up in the making of that quilt, and the history of my family is in the fabric.

I used regular copy paper for my hexes. It’s worked fine, but if I were to do it over again, I would use a heavier paper — even just a finer quality of copy paper. I think it’d keep the hexes more uniform and less likely to warp (as my upper-right hex did in the first photo above — need to go fix that one).

Happy to answer any more questions, if you think of them! In the near future, I’ll post photos of my process, including step-by-step on my basting process, and images from other crafters at various stages of their projects.

Now, I love my mom. I love her A LOT. So, I want to be careful not to sound judgmental or ungrateful in what I am about to say. In fact, as a licenseable psychotherapist, what I want to do first is sound clinical.

My mom is an obsessive hoarder and a compulsive shopper. I mean this in the most diagnostic and clinical sense. I’m sure that most of the people reading these words could stand up at the microphone and pound at the pulpit and express some level of embarrassment about the state of their “stash.” There’s a reason that groups and projects exist specifically for stash-busting and stash diets and blog giveaways and all sorts of other modes of stash regulation.

As a family, we’ve had to come together and stage an intervention recently. Mom has been slowly filling up their 8-bedroom home with sacks and sacks of creative potential for years — art supplies, unused paints, pristine stacks of scrapbook paper, and the fabric. Mostly fabric. An estimated $12,000 of fabric.

See? It’s gotten a bit out of hand.

Recently, she’s felt a drive to clean out and simplify her life. Seizing on this opportunity, several of my siblings descended on the house a few weekends ago to help her sort through and purge. My understanding is that they only hit the very tip of the stash iceburg. Between me and my two sisters, we split up the wares. Mom brought the first installment of stash stuff last weekend, and I spent this weekend trying to assimilate it into my small apartment.

But what a chore! This photo is deceptive because it doesn’t account for the quantity of fleece, felt (Oh, goodness — the felt!), patterns, notions, and kits that accompanied it. This photo only shows the quilters cotton. It doesn’t even show any of the fabrics too ugly to give away. But I loaded up my car and dragged all of these “acceptables” (mixed with many “very, very cutes”) to the laundromat on Saturday for a huge, tri-county pre-washing event.

What you see above are the results of $30 of quarters, 6 laundry carts, and 5 hours of work. The stack closest to the camera — which measures over 13″ high — is comprised entirely of fat quarters, 1/2-yard and 1-yard cuts. With rare exception, these fabrics are pristene — uncut and untouched. The basket contains pieces smaller than a fat quarter, which will all need to be ironed and sorted into scrap bins. Behind them are two stacks of large cuts — one of whites and neutrals, the other of colors — which will also need to be ironed.

I saved myself the pain of ironing the fat quarters, though, by taking time to right them as they came out of the dryer. I painstakingly smoothed them out into a uniform pile. Some of them came out of the dryer so terribly wrinkled and cinched that I thought they would never untwist. I tried to catch them before they were bone dry, and while still a little warm, and with determined smoothing, tugging, and shaping, they came out nearly as good as new!

Below you see the stack of smoothed-out pieces:

…and compare them with a few of the sad, wrinkled fat quarters that didn’t make it to the smoothing stack:

I am amazed at how much good that little bit of work really did. It is going to save me so much ironing time.

Someday I will have a house with a yard and a craft room. I’ll have a fabric stash which is accessible and turns over frequently. Shoot, someday I’ll have a washer and dryer of my own and can do this kind of chore in small bursts over a span of time rather than in one explosive flurry under the eyes of curious onlookers.

For now, though, I’ll be grateful to my mom for her generosity (and little bit of craziness) and vow to never, ever buy another piece of fabric again. For as much as I love my mom, I hope I don’t inherit her tendencies along with her cast-offs.

I envision some major giveaways in our future. If you’re not already subscribed, might I recommend you do so? You won’t want to miss it as I slowly give away the spoils of the war we are waging with my mother’s stash.

Do you have thoughts, tips, websites, patterns, or recommendations about stash busting? Please share!