A Hexagonal Obsession

Hazel has asked me to do a guest post about my quilt, I feel very honoured!

The Quilt (as it is named in our house) began about two years ago with a trip to St. Gemma's Hospice shop in Street Lane where I found an old 1980's copy of a Marks and Spencer book about quilting. I started in earnest to make the small paper hexagons and began sewing the fabric covered hexagons together to make small flowers. After some initial research about quilting I came to the realisation that America must be quilting heaven. The fabrics available in the US were so bright and modern and unusual that I couldn't help but feel a little jealous as a trawled through the many American quilting blogs there are on the internet. I turned my attention to the internet in a desperate search to find some fabrics that I liked. Ebay was my first friend, the choice of fabrics available was immense and most of my purchases were made from shops like sewmehappy. I also went on tours of the quilt shops near to me, The Skep, Samuel Taylor's at Embsay and The Viking Loom in York all became firm favourites.

After some success with Ebay I moved onto a site called Swap-bot. Now this changed everything! Swap-bot is an online site that matches people together so that you can swap things, anything - sweets, card making supplies, but most interestingly for me - you can swap fabric. The first step in swapping was to set up a profile page, here you describe your likes and dislikes and the kind of things you would be able to swap with another member. Once you have set up a well padded and informative profile about yourself you can go in search of 'swaps' that you would like to join. The magic Swap-bot computer links you up with your swap partner so that you know who you will be sending to and who you will be recieving from. Once you have recieved your parcel, you open it with much anticipation and rate the person who sent to you. The site is such a simple and easy way to share different crafting materials, obviously you do take a risk that you will send something out and recieve nothing back but this has only happened to me once or twice in the 137 swaps I have taken part in. There's a fab Swap-bot blog and that is written by the gorgeous Swap-bot founder Rachel where there's lots of information should you decide to become a fellow swapper!

So here's a little tour of The Quilt in pictures...

I haven't chosen a specific colour theme, I have just chosen fabrics that I like. Some of the fabrics above where bought from The Skep, The Viking Loom and good old Samuel Taylors in Leeds city centre. 

Barack Obama was the result of a fabric swap organised through Swap-bot. Never has he looked so pretty!

Fussy cut cats stalking a fish.

The first fabric I bought on Ebay, never seen again - if anyone knows who it's by I would love to know...

Car boot sales have been suprisingly useful, the embroidered flowers in the centre of the photo above were from an old napkin, initially I felt quite bad cutting up someone's beautiful sewing but I figured that it will last longer as part of a quilt than it would if it was a napkin.

The Quilt is well travelled, the small, portable nature of hexagon flowers has meant that I've been able to sew on holiday on France, away with school to Ireland and most importantly on my way to the many away and home matches played by the greatest team the world has ever seen.

Helene