Painting On Fabric

Caley at Fave Crafts contacted some of us who have contributed to the site about trying out some Tulip fabric dye products.  When she asked me if I want interested I thought “Heck, yea!”  I love trying out new things and finding ways to make something that I might not normally buy work for me.  Then after I said yes I thought…is this a good idea with a toddler around??  Yes, I questioned my sanity.  Thankfully, I roped Liz into coming over with her son.  It was like killing two birds with one stone – Brice and Colin could play and Liz and I could work on the project.

Only that didn’t go quite as planned.  Brice decided he was going to be cranky all day.  I’m just hoping it’s because he’s teething and not because he’s coming down with something.  I just don’t do well on these kind of days.  Especially when I have fabric dye on the table and he comes along and pulls on the plastic liner with the fabric dye on it!  But that’s beside the point of this post.

So once I knew the dye would be coming I had to think of something I wanted to do with it.  I knew that I wasn’t going to be tie-dying a shirt.  That just isn’t my kind of craft.  But I knew I could come up with something fun.  I surfed around their eBook for some ideas and was immediately drawn to the fabric painting.  That then reminded me about Amy Karol doing fabric painting her her Bend the Rules with Fabric book.  It was a water colored effect and I had REALLY liked the quilt she made when I saw it in person.  So I had my project.

Liz and I got busy mixing dyes (and getting our hands stained – oops!) and whipped out the Jacquard resist I picked up.  Liz went first to test the waters.  She drew right on the fabric with the resist.  We then took out a blow dryer to dry it out a little faster and then she began painting.  But you’ll have to wait to see her posts for photos of her projects.

After we decided to work on my project, we decided to try something's differently.  After we both came up with the idea to have me do falling leaves, I grabbed a water soluble pen and drew out my leaves.  Then I traced over those with the resist. 

Once we had it dried, I spritzed it with water and started painting, just as you would with watercolors.  The results are amazing!  I love how you can blend the colors together and not have the bulk of a paint on the fabric. 

I tossed it in the washer and dryer tonight and couldn’t be more pleased.  (I didn’t heat set it with the iron first, I forgot.  So Liz will have to let us know how that goes.)  I did apply the paint pretty heavily on most of the leaves, but a LOT of the dye washed out…partially because that’s what’s going to happen, and partially because I didn’t wrap it in plastic and let it sit for the recommended time.  But that was kind of hard to do with this project.  I am so excited to do this again and hope to get to a few more small projects this weekend.  …and of course get this quilted!

Hexagon Inspiration

If the last two posts weren’t enough inspiration for you, maybe these lovely photos will do it for you.  Click on the mosaic to get more info on the individual images.  And then head to your sewing room and get to making some hexagons already!

As an aside, I was asked a question in the comments that I thought was good to answer here.  I was asked about the purpose of paper piecing your hexagons vs. just sewing them together.  There is absolutely no reason you couldn’t just sew them together without paper piecing, you would just want to make sure that you had  cut out your hexagons accurately and left yourself a true 1/4” seam allowance so that all of your hexagons are consistent when sewing together.  Of course, this does require you to cut hexagons from your fabric.  The benefits of paper piecing is for accuracy in size, accuracy in points meeting up and with using squares of fabric instead of hexagons to wrap your paper pieces, it makes for a much faster processes (in that respect at least).  Also, it gives you something to hand sew for those times you are away from your sewing machine.  I love having projects to work by hand and this one is very gratifying in that it goes together quickly and looks so nice and neat with the paper piece.  So I hope that gives you a little bit of insight as to why you would paper piece vs. machine sew.  I will be doing some machine sewn hexagons in the near future and I’ll of course share that all here.

Adventures In Hexagons

I tried just about everything I could think of with these hexagons. Different papers, different stitches, different methods of attaching… So I wanted to share all of this with you to let you know what I thought of each method. And, this would be a great post for all of you to share your insights, too!

Preparing Fabric

I first went with the suggestion to cut my fabric hexagons in the shape of the hexagon with a seam allowance. It got old drawing the lines around my hexagon and then cutting a seam allowance around that.

Luckily, I was researching for these posts and remembered Alicia’s post on hexagons, I read it again and saw she was using squares (I only get to skim blogs and look at pictures sometimes). So now I only use squares. She referenced the website Paper Pieces and on the right side of the webpage is a link to a hexagon cutting guide (but if you follow this link, it will take you to the page where you will find a link to it at the bottom). This guide tells you how big to cut your squares based on the size of your hexagon. I’m telling you, this makes life SO much easier. And I think the back is prettier looking.

Paper Pieces

My first hexagons I used were actually not paper, they were Teflon. I found a package of these at Joann’s and thought it was a good idea. I like that they were slick and easy to remove from the fabric and that they were reusable. Very green. I like to be “green” if I can. What I didn’t like was how you had to stitch the corners of them to keep the fabric in place. I found I had to double stitch the corners to keep them down (rather than working the hex backwards, which was too much for my brain) and therefore harder for me to remove the basting thread later. I also didn’t like the fact that they were thick…thicker than paper anyways. I don’t know why that mattered to me, but it did.

Next I moved to regular paper piecing, as explained in my tutorial. Let me tell you, this went SO much faster. While the hexes wont be reusable for long, I think you could get 2 or three uses out of them. I created a 1” hexagon sheet and went to town cutting them out myself. I know I could have bought them, but everyone locally was out of the 1” size when I was looking, and really, I didn’t mind cutting these out. Took no time at all.

My next thought was to try freezer paper. I cut my freezer paper down to 8.5” x 11” and got it as flat as I could and fed it through the printer. The printer didn’t really like it on it’s own, but I got it to work well enough. This was awesome! I could iron these down to my pieces and not worry about the fabric shifting on me while I was sewing, thus leaving me a little short when I got around the hex. I had that happen a few times, but made it work. I worried that there would be a problem with missing the freezer paper when stitching together my hexagons, but it wasn’t an issue at all. And best of all, once I removed the basting thread, the papers just fell right out of the fabric.

Another reason I really liked using the paper was for how easy it was to keep the paper hexagon in place and still sew together my multiple hexagons. The paper allowed me to bend the adjoining hexagons when I sewed my rows together. With the Teflon, I had to remove it before I could do anything, or bend it and make it work. That didn’t really work so well. But the Teflon is slightly pliable. You could try using a glue stick, but make sure it’s a fabric glue stick as I've read regular glue sticks can brown the fabric over time. I didn’t try this, but this could be a great option, too!

Stitches

The standard for connecting hexagons is the whip stitch, but I found if I didn’t pull my stitch tight enough on the back, or keep them close enough together, when I flipped it over to the front I could see my stitches. It looked sloppy. So I thought I'd try a couple of different stitches.

First I tried the ladder stitch. This worked great for keeping my stitches hidden and on the front it looked good. But not great. You could see the ladder effect on the front where the fabric connected to each other. While it was clean looking, it was kind of odd. Also, it was a bit of a pain to work this stitch, not as fast as a whip stitch.

Then I decided to do a running stitch. I went in from the front to the back and then from the back to the front and pull my thread full through the two stitches on this return stitch. This went very fast. And it looked great from the front. So I had my stitch. I still worked the corners the same as the whip stitch, stitching through it twice to secure. The biggest downfall of this stitch is not being able to secure loose ends of thread as with the whip stitch. Doing the double stitch in the corner, on my second stitch I would just slip the needle through the second stitch before pulling it tight and this created a nice knot for me. This is the stitch I ultimately used and liked.

If you do decide to stitch with the whip stitch (it is a quick stitch) just make sure to keep your stitches close together and pull your thread tight as you go along to give a clean look on the front of your work.

Assembling

I played with a few ways of assembling the hexagons. If will of course depend on the type of hexagon project your working, but there are a few directions to consider.

First I just did random piecing. I just started adding hexagon to hexagon, keeping it somewhat even, but no real direction.

The I tried assembling the flowers, that is to say, one hexagon in the center with a hexagon on each of its sides. Now, if you will be doing hexagon flower projects, this will of course be the way you’ll want to assemble them. There are two ways to approach this. You can stitch all the hexes to the center hex first, and then stitch those hexes to each other after that. By connecting the hexes to the center hex first, you can keep a constant running stitch. When you go to connect the sides you will have to do each side individually, knotting at the end to secure. You may choose to connect two hexes to the center and then connect them to each other and continue on in that matter until you’ve worked around. Again, you will have stopping points where you have to knot and start again, but it’s all even in the end.

Because I wasn’t doing flowers, but a “square” of hexagons for the block, I choose to sew rows of hexagons and then sew those rows together. Sewing the rows together went very quickly, mainly because I didn’t have to start and stop my stitching. I just continued from one hex to the next down the row. You could also do this for the flowers, you would just want to have your hexes assembled and laid out before hand so you can place everything accordingly.

Resources

I came across lots of helpful sites while reading up on Hexagons. I’d like to share them here and if I come across any new links in the future I will add them as well. Let this be your hexagon resources post.

1. Posy Gets Cozy – Hexagon Piecing (Writes about her experience in hexagon piecing)
2. Postcards From Panama – Hexagon Quilt Tutorial (suggests using glue stick)
3. Craft Passion – Basic Hexagon Quilting Tutorial (links to hexagon pincushion project)
4. Thimble Blossoms – Hexagon Quilt Tutorial (Great tutorial and photos)
5. All Buttoned Up – Oh snap! That girl doesn’t baste. (Awesome alternative to basting)
6. The Jax Collection – Traditional English Hexagon Patchwork Demonstration – Video 1 and Video 2. (Great videos demonstrating how to make and connect your hexagons)
7. Incompetech – Hexagonal Graph Paper PDF Generator (generate your own hexagons in any size you need)
8. Paper Pieces – Hexagon Cutting Guide (how big to cut your squares of fabric and also a great spot to buy paper hexagons)

And that’s what I've learned so far. I have some more ideas, but we’ll have to wait to see what comes of them. You can be sure I'll share more as I learn more. I hope that all of this information is useful to you and that you find something to make piecing these a little easier for you. Happy hexagon sewing!

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The following links have been added after the original posting:

9. Texas Freckles - Hexagon Fussy Cut Template (A how-to for creating a template)

Tutorial :: Hexagons

October’s block of the month is hexagons.  A warning: these things are addicting!  I’m going to give a quick run down of how to make the block here, but for a more informative discussion on hexagons and everything I tried, please see my separate post on “Adventures in Hexagons” next posting.  There are many ways to make your hexagons, but the purpose of this tutorial is to learn the English Paper Piecing method.

Preparation

1. Download the 2” hexagon template and print off three pages.  Cut out the hexagons.  OR purchase a set of 2” paper hexagons at a local fabric store.  You need a total of 22.
2.  Cut 22 – 4 1/2” squares from your fabrics.

Directions

1.  Lay your hexagon paper onto your square of fabric and fold down one corner over the paper piece, flush against the straight edge.
2.  Fold over the side to the left of your first fold over the point of the hexagon, making sure the second fold is flush against the side of the hexagon paper.
3.  Insert your needle and thread from the front of the fabric, through the paper piece and to the back side to the right of the fabric fold.  Pull thread through leaving a tail on the front side of the hexagon.  No need to knot it.
4.  Insert the needle from the back towards the front going through the fabric fold and paper back to the front of the hexagon.

5.  Fold down the fabric to the left of the fold you just secured and repeat step 3 and 4 to secure it, keeping a running stitch from corner to corner.  Repeat this 4 more times until your hexagon is wrapped in the fabric.  Leave the tails of your thread long and don’t worry about knotting them.  If I was worried about my thread slipping out, I would go back in and out of the fabric where I first started securing the hexagon.

Do this for all 22 hexagons.

6.  Place two hexagons right sides together, mathcing the sides at the corners.  Insert your needle at the corners, grabbing just the fabric and not the paper hexagons.  Don’t worry about knotting your thread, just leave yourself a little tail.  Insert your needle again into the same hole from back to front.  This is called a whip stitch.
7.  Continue whip stitching down the length of your hexagon, keeping your stitches close together.  Catch the tail of your thread under your whip stitches as you go along to secure it.

Your captured tail will look something like this under your stitches.

8.  Whip stitch to the end of your hexagon and again insert your needle into the corner twice, just as you did at the start.  I do place a tiny knot at the end to secure.  Open out your hexagon and you will see that the stitching has created a tiny ridge.  From the front you will see a seamless connection.

As an aside, here is how I quickly tie my knots (something that I just learned recently)

1.  I place my needle on top of my fabric to the immediate left of my thread.
2.  I wrap my thread around my needle twice, going from right to left.
3.  I pinch the wrapped thread under my thumb and pull the needle and thread up and through the two loops.
4.  I now have a perfect knot at the end of my work, holding it securely in place.

Continue sewing your hexagons together creating 3 strips of 4 hexagons and 2 strips of 5 hexagons. Lay them out so that you have a good visual of how they will be sewn together and grab your first two strips.

9.  Sew your strips together.  You will be sewing “Y” seams, which are really very easy to do.  You will just match up the sides of your hexagons and slightly bend the hexagons as needed to match the sides.  I like to start at the top and work my way down so that I am only having to knot my thread at the end instead of several times along the way.

Here is what your seams will look like as you piece together the rows.  The piecing here shows how the blue/green check has been sewn to the pink vine and blue posy.  Next the orange flower will be sewn to the blue posy and then the orange tile.

Continue in this fashion until your whole block is pieced.

Cut some strips of fabric, whatever color or print that you choose.  I am using white as a filler piece in my blocks, so I continued that theme here.   Decide how much of your hexagons you want peeking through and draw pencil lines on the hexagons.  I drew mine so that I had a square (centered on my hexagons) of 11 1/2”.  I then cut strips of white fabric to be 1 1/2”, laid them on my block, rights sides of fabric together, and used my penciled lines as the guide for placement of my strips.  I then sewed them down with a 1/4” seam allowance.  Finally, I trimmed my block to 12 1/2” square.  If you had not already decided to remove your papers before sewing, do so now.  That is what I did for my block.  I just used a very short stitch length when sewing my boarder fabric on so as to make the tearing away of the fabric easier.  This way I knew that my hexagons would keep their shape as I sewed.

I loved the effect of this block being boxed in by the white.  I feel as though I'm looking at a framed picture, or looking into a window.  Framing this block out just finished it off for me.  I hope you will give these a try, they are so much fun and easier to take with you where ever you may go.  Don’t forget to read the accompanying post on my “Adventures in Hexagons” next posting.