I had a chance to walk the Chicago Quilt Festival a couple weeks ago. I met up with my friend Susan, owner of Red Gate Stitchery, and we walked the show together. It was a lot of fun — and very eye-opening into the world of quilting. I have been sewing since I was a little kid, but I have never done a quilt.

The quilts that were on display were amazing. I can’t even imagine how many hours of work were represented in the quilts that I saw. I took pictures of some of my favorites:

The show was fun and very colorful. I think could see Chic-a’s products fitting into the quilt world sometime in the near future!

While I was there, I knew I wanted to look into English Paper Piecing. My knitting friend, Christina, had showed me this technique a while back — and I wanted to explore it.

I found a booth, The Quilted Forest,  that was explaining how this process works and they were selling all the pieces! Well, that was great and I got everything so I could get started in the hotel room that night.

Here’s my haul: 1” hexagon paper pieces, glue stick, pile of pre-cut fabric squares (very cool!), needles and thread because I didn’t bring any with me and thread snips. I have always wanted these for when I am sewing at the machine, so it was a good opportunity to get them. It turns out that, since the blade is under 3”, I could carry them on the plane!

The Quilted Forest’s owner Shelley Robson had suggested using the glue stick instead of sewing around the folded edges. That did prove to be easier, but when I started to sew the hexagons together, I ran into trouble. The next day, I went back to Shelley’s booth, and she got me all back on track. She told me to sew them together from the back — good idea!

I think this is going to be fun to learn, but I plan to use bigger than 1″ hexagons. Bigger will cover more space more quickly! I guess it just keeps in line with how I don’t like to knit small things and I don’t like sewing small things…

Anyway, I have decided I am going to start a project using this method. This should be quite an interesting journey, so stay tuned for an update soon!