Spotty Hexagons Wordless Wednesday Again

Hope Valley Flimsy

 The hexagon quilt top is all put together.  Yay! !  As you can see, I couldn't stop making those six sided deelies and added some one inch hexies to the border. I think they look like gum balls! Sort of.

 Now to decide how to quilt this fun top.  I don't want to mess it up. Any ideas? Do you think adding the straight-line quilting that I like so much would look good? I really want to love it!

Today, I finished up a couple of blocks for Heidi in the Nittany Block Party.  She provided the fabric and this interesting pattern called  Zig Zag Path. I can't wait to see the finished quilt.

Border Wars

Are you like me and sometimes have a war going on in your head about whether to add a border to a quilt, and if you do, what should it be? Sometimes, no border is better but other times....  Do you feel a temptation to go the easy route and either ditch a border or just slap on any old thing and call it good, even when you know the quilt needs "something more"to make it fabulous? Surely, I am not alone here! 

My Hope Valley Hexagon Quilt is screaming at me for a border.  So, I spent some time over the weekend coming up with something fun and funky to fit both the fabric and quilt pattern. I'm pretty excited about it, actually, so thought I'd share my progress with you and maybe even some pictures of how I made it......

 Here's a section of one of the borders before I attached it.  You can see that it is made with random angles of the Hope Valley prints on a light grey background. There's no rhyme or reason to the spacing of the triangles
.

I'm getting ready to sew on the borders and add another little surprise.......  I think I'm gonna like it and am glad that the quilt won the war!


Here's how I made the funky border for anyone interested in trying it.

 First, I cut my Kona ash fabric 6 inches wide and then chopped it up into random lengths. Using scraps from the center of the quilt, I cut triangles in various angles by "eyeball". Some sections have only one triangle and others have a triangle added to each side.

Next, I pinned the triangles RST onto the background, folding the fabric back before I sewed it to be sure that it would completely cover the grey underneath. (Don't skip this part. Guess, how I know that!)

After sewing on the triangle and pressing, I turned the section so the background side was up and using my ruler and cutter, trimmed off the printed fabric even with the background.

The last step is to fold back the triangle onto the front and cut off the background underneath to make a nice quarter inch seam allowance and eliminate bulk.

Here's my finished section.

I continued to add small sections until my border was the length I need. That's it!  So fun to make!  Better run.... I hear my machine calling!

Addictive and Contagious!

I'm not sure, but I might have been infected...........The warning is right there on the package.  How silly to think that I'm immune.  I should have been more careful.

I even put down my fabric and went in the kitchen to clear my head. Wait!  Are those hexagons on the paper towels? Help!! It's just too much. What's a girl to do when her quilty brain keeps telling her that her idea for adding some little hexies to a border for her quilt would be soooooooo great? Would aspirin help? No.  Maybe chocolate.  I'll let you know......

                                            Be careful, though............I'm just sayin!

Home Alone

Circumstances kept me home alone all day for a few days, so.......
when the cat's away, the mice will play!!!

 I started piecing together the blocks for Jennifer's Quilt-Along.  I had the cutting already done so it was quick work to put all the white strips around the 42 charm squares.

I even got a good start on the second round of strips for this square-in-a-square design.  I have a certain person in mind for this quilt and am excited at how it is working up.

Another quilt on my radar screen is the Serendipity Quilt using Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush fabrics. After sewing up the blocks, I began the fun challenge of laying it all out in a pleasing combination.  I tried matching up colors at first, but liked it better when I scattered the colors across the top in a miss-match design.  I even got several rows of squares set together. Oh, how I am loving this so far!  This may be my new Fall Wall Quilt for the living room rod that hangs above my stairway.  I like to change out the quilt there and am wanting some new ones. I wonder if I could finish it by Thanksgiving? Did I say that out loud?
  

 We rented a movie on Saturday night. I like to keep my hands busy when I'm sitting on the couch in front of the boob tube, so the hexies came out to play.  Since I have all 20 strips together, I began sewing the strips together. Oh man, this will take a while...wonder how long. I sure am glad that I chose to do a smallish table cover and not a large quilt!

I settled on a small running stitch and grey quilting weight thread to sew my hexagons together.  I tried using the silk thread that was recommended at guild meeting a few months ago, but it kept shredding on me, so I gave that up. It did make a fine invisible stitch though. Hopefully, all those paper hexagons will come out without much trouble. I'm counting on it!
Did you get to sew over the weekend?

Spotty Hexagons Wordless Wednesday

Hexie Beads

Slowly but surely, my little hexies are turning into something more than just a box full of pretty shapes.  After making 400 hexagons from all the dots I could find in my stash plus some checks and stripes, I decided to separate them into colors. It worked out fairly well that there are at least 19 or 20 of each color category, These five strips represent what I've gotten sewn together so far....two white strips, one red , a turquoise and a light green. Hanging from a tree branch, they remind me of a beaded curtain!

Five down, fifteen to go!

Welcome Autumn!

It's the first day of Fall!.......cooler air, less humidity, beautiful trees and bushes, mums, pumpkins, soup.....best of all----quilts on the bed and to cuddle with on the couch!
Here are a couple of favorite fall quilts that we use at our house..............

Scraps of fabric in neutrals and medium tones were put together randomly to create this log cabin quilt.  My kids were still living at home when I sewed the blocks for this quilt.  I remember them handing me fabrics to sew together in hodge podge fashion. The strips measure one inch finished with gold centers to pull everything together.  To me, this type of quilt never goes out of style!

Another family quilt that makes me think "Fall" is this Bulls Eye quilt. I remember the fun day that I put these blocks together with two friends, Robin and Becky. Each of us had done some sewing at home first, making blocks by stacking three free cut circles and then top stitching them onto a neutral background.  At my house, we cut each of our circle blocks into  fourths and traded parts, sewing the parts back together to create the pieced blocks you see in the picture. Every time I use it, I can't help but try to remember which parts were made by whom!

Even though my fabric choices have changed in the years since making this quilt, it is still close to my heart. Many washes later, it has a raggedy look that only gets better with time! 

Yesterday was the last day of summer...my favorite season, by the way. I ended it with a bang and a thrill in getting to meet up with one of my "invisible friends", making her a new real life friend!  You see us above in front of a bright summery quilt at Harper's Quilt Shop in downtown Overland Park, Kansas.  Linda and I began exchanging emails not long ago when I began reading her blog, Flourishing Palms. I can't really recall how we found each other but I remember commenting once on how much we have in common.  When her daughter recently moved to Kansas City, it was not long before we arranged to meet for coffee and some shopping.  I don't think the air was silent for more than a heartbeat in the two hours and a half hours that we spent together.  She is so cute and just as much fun to be around as I'd imagined. Linda has a wonderful ministry called Stichin' Mission where she teaches women how to make quilts at no charge, only asking them to consider donating that first quilt to charity. She's already given away over 600 quilts to children around the world through her ministry! What a difference she is making in this life!
 Thanks, Linda, for a lovely afternoon. Oh, and I'm so glad that you didn't turn out to be a 15 year old boy masquerading as a quilter or something! That would have stunk!!

Picnic Quilt

It's turned a little cooler....... just in time for the Labor Day weekend. Haven, Maelie and I got out the Picnic Quilt yesterday.

We haven't had much of a chance to use it lately in all of the heat and humidity of our midwest summer.  

I love this scrappy spider web quilt! It came to live with me one day as my husband and I were walking through an estate sale during the last half hour of the last day of the sale.  We'd stopped in just to see if there was anything good left.  As we were leaving the slim pickings in one of the bedrooms, I spied a glimpse of fabric peeking out from underneath the mattress of an old bed.  When my husband lifted the cushion, we found this little gem hiding underneath. With only a few minutes of the sale remaining we were able to snag the utility quilt for only $10! (We ran out of there before the seller could change his mind!)

      The quilt is perfect for Ritz Bits cracker picnics with little girls on a Sunday afternoon. 

                                            And maybe even a nap, if we get tired!

Potpourri

I'm going to dish up a mix of eye-candy for you today!


First on the list......


I have several quilts hanging in my house and thought that I would show you another one today.


This simple quilt holds a special place in my quilty heart!




I bought the fabrics for it when I visited France eight years ago.  Some of the squares were made by cutting up Provincial print cloth napkins.  I stayed with my friend, Susan, in Germany during that trip and pieced the quilt in her basement sewing room. Ah, memories!

Every time I look at the wall hanging, I am reminded of the fun vacation in the spring of 2002.

I love hanging different quilts in this spot, but this one stays up most of the year.

Next up....here's my box of 1.5 inch hexagons.......over 300 made so far and closing in on the 400 I need for the  tablecloth I have in mind. I have yet to begin sewing the hexies together!

Next week the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild will be meeting and I have been busy making the blocks for a block exchange I'm in.  Andrea requested Plus Blocks and provided the aqua dot fabric. She also hinted that she likes red and grass green...hopefully these will fit the bill.

I also volunteered to make two 12 inch blocks in orange and blue to be included in charity quilts for a local children's hospital. I've been looking for orange fabrics for this project as well as another virtual bee I belong to where orange seems to be a very popular color!

The temperature has been crazy hot here the last few days, with the dew point out of sight!






The only sane thing to do is stay inside and work on quilts. Am I right?!

Joan had a contest on her blog, Wishes, Kind and True, a while back. I was so excited to correctly  guess the missing fabric in this Amy Butler Love charm pack.  She sent me two charms of each fabric in the entire line, so I am having fun ogling all this yumminess!!Lucky me, I also was randomly chosen by Heather of A la Mode Fabric to win another charm pack of fun fabrics by Heather Ross. These cute prints are perfect for a baby quilt I am getting ready to start on!

Here's the baby and her big sister, Lula sitting on their daddy's lap this morning. That precious 5 pound bundle of joy is my sixth grand baby, Jane Susanne, fresh from God.

              See, I told you that I was lucky!  No, not lucky.  Blessed beyond measure!!