This quilt is one of the most frustrating I have ever made. The idea was to make a twin-sized quilt, but due to a major miscalculation on my part, I now have a lovely cot-sized quilt and absolutely no-one to use it!
The template started out much larger and, in a moment of sheer stupidity, I decided it would be a great idea to cut out all my fabric into squares of a sufficient size to be able to just draw round my template and cut more than one at a time. I measured my hexagon from top to bottom, added an inch 'just in case', and blithly set about chopping up my fabrics. Unfortunately, what I'd failed to account for was that a hexagon's longest 'side' is from side to side (if you see what I mean). When I'd cut up all my fabrics into the required number of squares and tried to put my template onto it, it didn't fit! So, I had to cut down my template to a size that fitted my squares.
Note to self - next time check that the template fits the square before cutting them all out! (Or, better still, perhaps it would be better to cut them out one at a time)
My next challenge was the quilting. I'd decided that I'd do simple straight line quilting, using a quilting stitch built into my machine. A trip to my local sewing shop provided 3 reels of a variegated Sulky thread that I'd heard so much about and thought would be great to use. The sewing shop owner said that I should use a top stitch needle, but I sort of ignored this advice. I was machine quilting, and you use a machine quilting needle when you're machine quilting, don't you? Another very bad decision. After having to take out 2 lines of quilting due to the fact that the thread was constantly breaking, I thought that perhaps the advice I'd been given in the shop wasn't as odd as it sounded, and changed my needle to a top stitch needle. It did lessen the breakage I'd been experiencing, but, even though I tried every tension setting I could, the thread broke quite regularly. Now I am not sure if it was something I was doing or not, but I've never had this problem with any other thread I've used. Would I use Sulky thread again? At the moment, it is not likely.
All in all, the quilt has turned out very well and I'm pleased with the result. Now I just need a home for it to go to.
