thai stiches & sights

 

hello, hello! i'm home (for a minute). our two weeks of senior tripping around thailand with d4 are done and dusted. i'm a jetlagged wreck, slowly trying to adjust. i can't seem to bring myself to sew anything, but that will come back soon enough.

the epp pouch went everywhere with me and i got some stitch time in a few airports and one slow hotel morning. the 3 days we were on a boat in the islands were too hot and sticky for stitching and the rest was all go, go, go. so my "100 days of stitching" didn't happen with regularity, but i did get some stitching done.

our beach front hotel in phuket had this sweet little "yoga window" where d4 and i relaxed and i did some stitching. i don't know what you call it exactly - it was unlike anything i saw anywhere else or have seen, but it was a small window bay with two mats in it that made me think it would be a great spot to do some yoga, so i called it the "yoga window." and i did some stitching there on my not-yoga mat.

the lighting was great and the view good. it's a design feature i may have to consider for my new house.

i started the trip off strong with basting several pieces in the airport. we arrived more than 2 hours early, so i had plenty of time for basting. i was a little peeved at my husband for making us get there so early, which turned out to be completely unnecessary (the rumored tsa troubles were not an issue, thank goodness), but better safe than sorry, i guess. 

i was irked because in the hour before we left, being fully packed and ready to go, i found myself with time on my hands and i got quite close to finishing the top for "pinky stinky" edna entirely. if only i hadn't forgot to add a few star points, which required unpicking and awkward adding, i would likely have gotten it done in the hour i had. if we had waited another half hour, i would definitely have finished it. so close! but as it was, i had to leave the last row incomplete and get on my way with world travels. so i used the extra time at the airport to baste and contented myself with that.

we first flew into singapore for a few days, then on to chaing mai, followed by phuket, and finished up in bangkok. at the royal palace on our last full day in bangkok, i found several quilt-related things. some of the temple exteriors were intricately decorated with colorful, mirrored tiles in geometric shapes that immediately put me in mind of quilt patterns. 

this tile floor was on a porch at the entrance - definitely a quilt there.

this diamond floor pattern was in the queen sirikit textile museum, which was a small gem with the best gift shop ever.

the queen was a fashion icon in the 1960's. she revived and popularized several traditional thai dress styles, which were featured at the museum. these fabric samples from some of the dresses caught my fancy.

i do love a good textile! they are all thai silk and just beautiful.

these vintage printed cottons were especially nice. somehow i missed the sign at the beginning of this room that said "no photos," so as i was preparing to take a photo of the information badge that told all about the fabric, a guard came up and chastised me. oops!  photos were definitely allowed in the other rooms, so i was confused. but this room had some very old textiles in low light, which may be why they didn't want photos because anyone using flash would damage them. fortunately, i hadn't used a flash. 

i wish i'd found some fabrics like these for sale somewhere because they would have been great for quilting. what i found a little later in the gift shop was almost as good.

a whole section of fabrics for sale! i was swooning and started imagining which i wanted immediately. they were all silks such as those used in the queen's formal clothing, but i have seen quilts made with silk before and knew i could use them if i was careful. the only problem was they only sold the fabric by the meter, no small cuts. it was surprisingly inexpensive, certainly less than liberty, but i didn't want too much of it. i had little to no room to take it home in my luggage, so i made myself pick just two colors and left it at that. i was a little flustered having to pick only two and needing to do it quickly, so i'm not sure i made the best choice. but i did what i did and i have some lovely silks to make into a small quilt of some sort. i can't complain.

i was drawn to the blues and greens first and had several in mind while i waited my turn. when i realized i would only be getting two colors, i picked this pretty blue first (photographed a bit bright) and wanted to get a coordinating woven print, but second guessed myself and decided to just go with another color. so i picked the gorgeous citrine color next. it's the color i like best of the two and now wonder if i shouldn't have picked something other than the blue to go with it. when i decide what i'm making with them, i'll see if i was right or not.

when i asked for one meter of the first fabric, the saleswoman told me i would need two meters minimum for a skirt and i tried to explain to her i was making a quilt, but the language barrier did not compute. it's alright. i know what i needed and got it.

i would have taken more photos of the fabric options on the shelves, but i was pretty sure i'd seen a sign at the entrance to the shop forbidding photos. i couldn't resist these quick covert snaps, but i didn't want to take any obvious ones.

so, royal palace in bangkok was a complete quilting/fabric win, i made my first fabric purchase of the year, and i got some more epp shapes basted on the trip. success!

now i'm home and looking forward to more wip busting.

wip wednesday, 2026.12 - missing hexagons

 i'm between trips at the moment, so i'm prepping my epp project for more travel. we'll be taking d4 on her senior trip to thailand for two weeks. it's not going to be a slow destination trip like spring break in costa rica was, so i'll not be taking much with me. at most, i'll probably only stitch while we're on flights or when we're on a boat for a few days. i'd love to take "groovy liberty" with me for handstitching, but that would take up too much precious luggage space. so epp it is!

i was cleaning my sewing room over the weekend, scouring every box, basket, nook, and cranny for some hexagon paper pieces i'm missing and needed for the trip when i found a couple more black-and-white prints i want to add to the project. i cut a single 4" strip of each print and threw them in the wash, so now they're ready to go with the others.

i also discovered that i had some washed strips of those other black-and-white prints i found and wanted to add before. the larger pieces i found weren't washed, but there were washed strips in the milk crate, so those have been cut up and added to my travel pouch, too.

i decided for ease of transport and for the most compact set up to bring along hexagons and squares that need to be basted. i won't be stitching together any pieces this time around, but i will be moving the project forward by getting pieces i need basted and ready for when i can get back to stitching everything together. i'm not doing triangles because their points are more likely to get bent or damamged than the other shapes are and i'm playing it safe with what i'm taking along.

everything easily fits into the "quilting cardio" pouch i chose for this trip. i don't know what airline regulations are for small scissors in thailand and the other places we'll be flying through, but i hope these small dmc snips pass muster. they're a cheap pair that i won't be too sad about parting with if they do get confiscated, unlike my precious ginghers that got taken in australia. the tips on these are more blunted, less sharp, which was the complaint the 20 year old gal who inspected the snips in sydney had. i can still see her holding my ginghers, tapping them with her finger, saying, "but they're sharp." then i had to let her take them. sad day.

as i was prepping for packing, trying to ascertain where i was with basted pieces and what else is needed, i finally broke down and made some notes about numbers for myself. i organized by shape and color, made lists, then counted the pieces i've already used to see what needs to be included more and what i need to baste. it was a process, for sure, but i feel more on top of everything now.

i got out my quilt planning notebook to make my notes in. i already had some notes for the project, which i just added to. looks like this is a page d5 got ahold of ages ago when she added her two cents of scribbled thoughts to some of my notations. i think it's cute.

i was going to add the new hexagon pieces to the end of what i already have done, when i realized it would be better to add them in the middle of the cogs i've got ready to join. i started to lay out those new sections but decided to shift gears to basting first. i'll get back to this after i have pieces basted.

i was going back and forth between all these pieces & notes on my bed and the laundry & packing in the bathroom & closet close by. busy morning, but productive. i like feeling like this is making some progress finally.

i had a real headache over the weekend trying to locate the second pack of hexagon papers so i could make the new pieces. in the main project box i had one bag of hexagons with only 2 or 3 left in it. i was fairly certain i had another pack of 50 somewhere in my sewing stuff (talk about a needle in a haystack!), but i couldn't seem to find them anywhere. i went back to my milk crate in the sewing room that i recently rediscovered, but it didn't have any paper pieces in it. the receipt for my epp order was in the crate, so i was able to confirm i'd actually purchased 2 packs of hexagons, but where had i put them? i dug deep in the back of shelves and opened boxes i haven't touched in years. i found lots of interesting things, but no hexagons. finally i came across the other epp pieces i ordered along with my ferris wheel pieces: the makings for 5 wedding ring quilts and a pack of 2.5" diamonds. i was sure this was it, but there were no hexagons in there. i moved those pieces to the milk crate to consolidate and kept looking.

 

i did a lot of cleaning and organizing while i was looking. i tackled this set of fabric shelves. they weren't too bad, but i decided to organize them by print type so i can find what i'm looking for more easily. the tops of each pile were pretty sloppy because once the stack gets full, it's hard to neatly place a fabric on top, so there were lots of pieces flopping out of place.

i also decided it looks neatest and is easiest to identify a fabric if there is a single fold facing outwards, so i refolded all the pieces that weren't already folded this way. i was bemoaning the non-standard way different shops and vendors fold fabric as i spent an hour or more redoing their work. it makes it so much harder to put away easily when i have to refold each piece to a standard size and orientation, which i haven't been good at doing. so i'm doing it all now, one shelf at a time.

i got these two shelves of neutral low-volumes and solids neatened up. starting on the left, the stacks contain text prints & novelty prints, jen kingwell blenders & polka dots/spots organized by dot size, crosshatch prints & circles, all the white & cream solids (the browns, greys, and blacks got moved elsewhere). i pulled several prints out of other places in the room where i kept finding polka dots or other things that should be on this shelf, which is why i ended up moving the other solids. the text print stack has some colors in it because i'm undecided whether i want to keep them all together regardless of color or separate the neutrals from the colors. to be determined.

i'll work on those other two shelves from the top photo next. they have my checks/ginghams, stripes, and color low-volumes. there were lots of other small changes i made while looking for those darn pieces, but they aren't worth noting.

so what about those missing hexagons? i went back up to my bedroom where i have 3 different boxes with various bits of the epp project in them. i pulled out that baggy of hexagons i mentioned earlier to see if i'd made a mistake about how many were in it. yes, it still only looked like maybe a dozen pieces in there. i got to work on sorting & making all those notes, letting the hunt go for the moment. a couple hours later i moved something around on my nightstand and discovered a baggy with 2 or 3 hexagons in it under a book. huh? oh my goodness, i had both bags in my bedroom the whole time and mistook the fuller one for the nearly empty one, which is why i was searching high and low and not finding them. this has got to be the silliest mistake i've made in a long time. but, hey - there was no unpicking involved! just a couple hours of searching - lol

well, i'm all set to keep at my "100 days of epp" when we leave. i didn't do so much of it as planned in costa rica, but that's mostly because i was doing the handwork on the other quilt i brought along instead. i think i did some make-up stitching on the epp when i got the handquilting done. the biggest news of the week, of course, is that i finished off "cheery (easter) quilt!" that's quite an accomplishment.  

here's the report in full:

handquilting: finished "cheery (easter) quilt"

cleaning/organizing: two shelves of fabric fixed

epp: mostly completed one wheel over spring break, cataloged & organized the pieces, packed a project pouch for basting on-the-go when we travel soon

fabric purchasing: none! but i did see a very pretty new colorway of liberty "betsy" i don't have in jolene's newest post that i will want to look up and order soon. that's two items on my fabric wish list now, but no actual purchases to date.

epp progress, wip wednesday 2026.11

i've been steadily sewing a couple of pieces, or at least just one seam, for "london wardrobe" every day now. fourteen out of 100 days, done and dusted. my plan of attack is to put 3 to 4 hexagons & adjoining pieces together, then join those as pairs, and keep upscaling the size of pieces i'm connecting until i have this row complete. one of the original 3 wheel cogs (what i call the interconnected wheels) will be attached to the right of the above pieces, and then there's one or two more sets until this row is done.

looky what i found in my sewing room! mooooore of the original fabrics for this project. when i was gathering all the parts of this project together a few months ago, i thought i had seen some of them in one of my milk crates, but couldn't locate them. today i found it.

so. much. fabric.

there are even some more black-and-white prints i put aside to use as hexagon centers. i like these prints more than some that i've already used, so i would still like to incorporate them into the project.

these are the only fabrics that weren't prewashed yet. all the fabrics in the basket that i purchased for this quilt were prewashed because the book that taught me to epp said you really need to wash for epp projects. so i did. that makes it hard to use the leftovers with other projects because i'm not a prewasher for all my other quilts! so i'll have to prewash these if i decide to still add them in the quilt, but i will only wash small amounts, not the whole fat quarter (or whatever is here of each).

i also came across my travel epp pouch with the makings for two wheels inside. i would just mix these pieces back in with the others, but i already attached all the squares to one of the hexagons.

so i'll be completing that wheel by adding the triangles in, but mix the pieces for the other wheel into the general pile. that's one more individual wheel i'll have to work in now, but it just is what it is.

i did my first bit of unpicking when i accidentally sewed a triangle side to a hexagon. that isn't supposed to happen. it won't even lie flat that way! 

and then i did another unpicking when i turned a partial wheel i was adding onto a cog the wrong way. i let out a sigh or two of frustration with myself and then just fixed it. not so bad, really.

i was stitching during a zoom meet-up hosted by heather ross and denyse schmidt about a quilt kit collab they did. the zoom meeting was fun, but it made for some distraced stitching. maybe it wasn’t the best idea to combine the two activities? . the "crazy star" quilt is a fun one, especially in the fabrics heather used. it's one i'd like to do someday. i'm pretty sure denyse sent me the pattern as part of my prize kit for the fwsg quiltalong, but it will have to wait until my "season of wips" is over. 

epp is the only quilting i've done this week as i've been going hard at house design and i've got some travel coming up, so i've had to work at packing. my sewing projects were packed first because i know my priorities. so no other piecing or quilting for me lately. however, with spring break around the corner, i'll have some handstitching time soon. "cheery (easter) quilt" will get some more colors added.

i'm still strong on the unintentional fabric fasting. i'm just not buying fabric because there has been no need for it and as i've buried my head in the sand from social media, i'm not tempted by what i don't see out there. heather ross did mention in the zoom chat that they've added 35 new colors to the ruby + bee solids collection, which is really tempting. i think i can wait, though. since they're solids, they will be available for a while as part of a permanent collection. i looked at them on the windham site and they are pretty, so they are definitely on my wishlist for the future. but for now, i am not motivated enough to purchase immediately.

i had a scathingly brilliant quilt-related house design idea come to me the other morning. if it actually comes to fruition, i'll share. it involves heather bailey and possibly hsts. that's all i'll say for now. the house won't go under construction until next year at the earliest, so i have time to work on it. until then, it lives in my brain and makes me smile on occasion.

happy stitching, friends!

100 days of epp

day 1, first piece

 i was reading about juliann's 100 days of circles project and as i was commenting to her that i've never done a 100 days project because we travel so often, i thought about my epp project that is portable and sadly in need of some progress. (i've definitely travelled with it before: alaska, san diego, yosemite, the south, scotland, switzerland, italy.) what would it look like if i sewed even just one piece on every day for 100 days? that would be a lot of pieces put together and certainly farther along than i am now.

so i pulled out my project, which has been living on the floor next to my bed since i pulled it out in december so i can think about it, and added a triangle. then i went ahead and added a square, too, because i was in no particular hurry to get to anything else immediately.

as i stitched, i thought about what pieces are needed next, which is important to know so i don't join the wrong things together and make more work for myself or, heaven forbid!, need to unpick some handstitching. 

i spread the pieces i have out on the floor to decide just what it is i want to do with this mess and what would be the quickest configuration to complete.

the two sets of three interconnected cogs i already made are really throwing a wrench into things. they don't easily fit into the simplest layouts i could do. i moved pieces around for quite a while to see what was possible and what would be required for different layouts. my brain started hurting and i was getting bored. but i kept at it for a while. after all: "little quilty chores equal big quilty finishes."

i used two colors of bright squares (the pink and turquoise) to easily see what squares would be added to current joined pieces, which is why there are so many of them in this photo. this large slab is one piece of a five-interlocking-rows layout i was considering. it feels like so much work still to go!

finally, i have landed on making a row of 15 hexes across and another interconnected row below it. this will start with one of the three wheel cogs, then require an X connecting piece between seven more already completed wheels and a hexagon and half a wheel (three squares, two triangles) in the next row down. that's where i'm starting and i'll see how i feel about what's left after this is complete.

something i'm still very much undecided about is what to do with all the unbasted pieces i cut for this project! each little stack has something like 60 pieces in it, which means i easily have enough to do 60 more wheels. that fit into my original plan just fine, but it's way more than i need now! they aren't precisely cut to exact measurements because they were for basting, not machine piecing, otherwise i could just use them in some other machine-pieced configuration. honestly, it's such a small bit of fabric but it's giving me a lot of angst about not using it!

i will need to dip into these piles to round out the additional pieces i need because i only have about 75 basted squares left and less of the triangles. i'm going to have to be more aware of what pieces i'm selecting now, laying out what i want to go where before i start joining them. this won't be the carefree "pick up a piece and add it randomly each day" approach that i was anticipating. but it will move the project forward.

oh, my 'lanta! just look what's in this other box i found in my sewing room. it's, like, two jelly rolls and more of strips. plus more squares and a whole mess of black-and-white squares for the hexagons (which i will actually need). i may be making another quilt entirely just from these strips or making a striped backing. i'd go right for the backing idea except i still have those large cuts of yardage i already set aside for backing. i really should have done some more maths before i got started on this project! me and my boundless enthusiasm for how much i was going to want to handstitch. yikes!

feeling lazy on day 2 and i laid out the first set of pieces to be joined while still in my pjs, bed unmade.

my pieces to join for the next few days

originally, part of the joy of this project was picking the pieces for the individual wheels and completing those. however, if i want to join them together, i'm going to have change my approach.

unfortunately, i realized when shifting all the parts around that the two pieces i added on day 1 are in the wrong place to be useful as a connecting X! haha, already off to a bad start. but that's not anything i'm not used to around here. i'll just adjust and figure out where to work it in as i go.

i'm currently about a week in and have completed that lower middle hex in the above photo. day 3 was d4's birthday and i clean forgot this was a thing, so i had to make up for it/start over on day 4. but i'm getting at least one side of a piece stitched each day now. mornings are best, but i did do one piece at the end of day 5 so as not to miss.

maybe, just maybe, this project will go somewhere this year after all!

wip wednesday 2026.7

 

i think i failed to mention in my last post that this blog is now fifteen years old. that means i've been quilting nearly a third of my life, which feels so strange since i took it up in my later 30's, well into adulthood. in the end, i will have been a quilter longer than i wasn't one. i didn't see that coming.

what have i accomplished in 15 years of quilting? take a look at my "quilt gallery" page to see what i've completed and my "wips" page to see what i'm still working on. the ratio is about 2:1. it’s not just about the finishes or the endless WIPs  it’s been about a whole lot of fun and learning and fabric and friends mixed in with a lot of mistakes and miscuts and frustrations. quilting has taught me a lot, given me a lot these past 15 years.

the opening photo is of a project nearly as old as this blog: my "london wardrobe" epp project. i began these hexagon-and-square-and-triangle wheels in 2013, planning to make 100 of them. currently, i have 22 full wheels, 2 sets of 3 interlocking wheels, and one middle piece complete. there are about a dozen hexagons and an innumerable amount of triangles and squares basted and even more cut, ready to baste. i have large cuts of a few feature fabrics for the backing and of the low-volumes for background for the front.

i took the project back out a few months ago to assess what can be done with it. i no longer have an interest in completing 100 wheels. i'm trying to figure out what i can do with the wheels i have complete instead. the answer to that question is not simple because of the state all the pieces are in. i wish i had it in me to keep at this project and see it through, but even a shortcut version is going to a lot of work at this point.

i'm still undecided on a layout. putting the wheels in rows will require making a lot of middle/half wheel/connecting pieces. making more interconnecting cogs for one big slab will require more work than i even want to think about. there's no quick fix way out of this mess. 

what am i to do?

maybe i just set it aside until such a point in my life as i have the motivation and time to keep making it into something like i originally planned?

the only reason i'm even thinking about it is i'm a little "tired of pink" at the moment and needed a distraction.

i'm not truly tired of pink - just tired of blogging about it. the only thing i get done these days is a few more stitches on "pinky stinky" edna, which is turning this blog into a play-by-play in pink. who wants to keep reading that?

as wednesday approaches and i haven't done any new quilting, i think to myself, "i need to go quilt a little so i have something to post." this isn't very genuine, on the one hand. on the other, it's motivating me to keep the project moving forward, even a little bit at a time. there's nothing wrong with that, is there?

i've thought of doing something else, but i need to get the pink thread off the machine before i move on. i'm really making myself stick to these wips until i get them finished, which is great for finishes but makes for boring blogging.

this week i put the star points on the pieces above and attached the horizontal sashing strips to 3 of the 16 patches for row 4. it was actually a nice break from house design.

as i was leaving the room last night, i noticed this bit of silliness above. i put the same star points on two consecutive pieces. the set on the right is supposed to be bird points, like the cornerstone block under it. that's going to be some work for me. upicking coming right up!

"pinky stinky" strikes again, which is to say, "hydee messed up again." 

and somehow i still make quilts.

some mountain quilting

Earlier last month, my 3 youngest daughters and I got to spend some time at our mountain cabin while everyone else stayed home and got started back into school. We got out of the extreme desert summer heat and into some wonderfully cool and beautiful country. I took 3 quilting projects along for the visit: my epp project, “Maude’s Chevron Peaks,” and “sugar sweet pinwheel” quilt. 

There’s a small sunroom at the front of the cabin that has large windows, a pair of rocking chairs, and a glorious view into the trees and over our neighbor’s ponds and meadow. This is where I usually sit to do my handstitching. It's such a contented spot for this sort of slow and meditative work.

My epp has been languishing away, untouched, for quite some time now, but I revived it earlier this summer while we were traveling through Alaska in an RV for two weeks. I got another wheel going while we were at the cabin. I always lay out the wheel and take a reference photograph before i start stitching it together, because no matter how hard I try to keep it in the right order, something always happens to jumble the pieces.

Maude just needed a foot or two of binding finished. Getting it complete was pretty exciting, but the view out the window that morning was pretty distracting in itself. Once it was complete, I photographed it on the cabin’s red railings, something I’ve always wanted to do with a quilt but never gotten around to before. Since red features heavily in several of my projects, I knew sooner or later I’d use it as a finish shoot location. I’ll post those photos soon.

It’s likely I could have completed the binding on this pinwheel quilt also, but I got pulled in the direction of epp instead. The pinwheel quilt has been at my dad’s house ever since my mom died this past March. I was working on it there as we waited out her last few days, and I left it there to work on whenever I visited my dad. He recently moved out of town, so I took the quilt back home with me. It’s covered in dog hair from his Pomeranian, which is the main reason I put it aside. It needs a good lint rolling first before I can get it completed.

I hung it out on one of the porch swings for an airing and to get a good look at the binding progress. It was a lot less than I thought. I almost always spread a quilt out on the floor when I want to check my binding progress. I feel like it’s the best way to see where I’ve gotten. Do you do that?
The quilt looks pretty at home at the cabin. I might be taking it up there to leave when it’s complete. Then again, I’ve considered giving it to my mom’s sister as a memory of the time we shared just before Mom passed. Undecided at this point.

Most of my epp work got done down by the river each day. The girls played in the water, trying to catch the newly stocked trout by hand, whilst I sat contentedly nearby and stitched, soaking in the mountain air and views. 

Maybe over Labor Day weekend I’ll get to go back up to the cabin for some more mountain freshness and stitching.