Weekend Sewing

Monday, April 29, 2013


There's nothing nicer than having a few hours all to yourself on a sunny weekend morning. You can do whatever you please. You can switch off your computer. You can play your favourite music as loudly as you like. 


You can bake a little date and apricot loaf to be enjoyed later with a cup of piping hot tea.


You can even start a new quilt.


I've had an idea for a HST (half square triangle) quilt for a while. I wanted to make something with this amazing Karavan FQ bundle. It's a mixture of blues, teals and turquoises offset with olive greens and pale apple green. 


I was tempted to mix it with a range of purples and greens, but I managed to hold myself back. Instead, I decided on a light grey - it's called Ash, by Kona. The Karavan range is a collection of swirls, dots, flowers --- and elephants. Oh the elephants! Ash grey is very appropriate.


After ironing and cutting the fabric into 5" squares, I started piecing them together. Chain piecing HST is really quite clever. You put two squares together, fronts facing each other. Draw a line down the middle diagonal, and stitch down 1/4" on either side of the line. Cut on the line, press open, and ta da! Two HSTs. Neat as a pin. Hopefully.


There's something wonderfully reckless about chain piecing. You never really know if it's going to work out quite how you imagined until you've chain pieced all of the pieces. I took a stack of squares and just went for it. I drew the line, pinned them together, and sew sew sewed. 


It is a wonderful feeling when you cut them, open them up, press them and voila! HST squares. All neat and lined up in a row. 


And then, my few hours were done. Just like that. I have about twenty completed squares made up of HSTs. I have another fifty or so waiting in the wings. Until next weekend.

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Stacey is a collector of crafts, and experiments with colour and crafts through yarn, watercolours, illustrations and textiles. She lives at the seaside with her husband, her two amazing kids, and an enormous collection of yarn. When she's not working or knitting, she's making soap and baking bread.

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