House Arrest

I'm happy to report that all of my Huddle blocks are now complete! Given that, you would expect that I would start sewing them together to make a flimsy, right? Nope. Instead, I have gone the way of the squirrel and started a new project.

This project has been on my list for a few years now and with everyone still under pseudo 'house arrest' in these COVID-19 times it seemed sort of appropriate. To the top of the list it goes.

Besides, Halo is still occupying my design wall so I'd have to lay Huddle out on the floor - that just seemed like more than I wanted to do today.

Not sure if you know about Pandemic Chocolate Days or not so I'll fill you in (consider this a public service announcement...). My good friend Rhonda has been more than thoughtful throughout these days of social distancing. She lives about 5 hours away from me and every now and then a little note arrives in the mail with a cheery hello and an emergency ration of chocolate. Love it!

It is amazing how something so small can have a huge impact on my day; it certainly helped me get through the cutting 😊. Recently, I found little individually wrapped Dairy Milk bars so it's time to return the favour.

It is rainy and cool today after a week of what felt like August, so down to the sewing room I went. I'm enjoying making these blocks more than I had anticipated - loving the dots too!....M

Still Huddling, or is that Muddling?

In between hand quilting there's some Huddle progress to share, too.

It goes in fits and starts, but gradually the 'done' pile has overtaken the 'to do' pile.

Still loving the colour combos and getting a little anxious to see them all playing together.

Love this green print with the o-so-subtle quilt print in the cream (click on the pic if you want to see a larger version of it).

I like that the colours have very little repeat throughout the quilt - the variety makes each block that much more interesting to sew.

Five more to go and then I'll start putting everything together. These blocks are 13" so it should be a relatively quick process (she says confidently)....M

Sunday Stitches

As often as I can on Sundays I like to join the crew over at Kathy's blog as I savour an hour or two of slow stitching.

Lately, my schedule has been packed with little time left for stitching and I am missing my quilting greatly, so this weekend it has been a return to the needle and thread therapy that helps soothe my ruffled edges and helps put things in perspective.

I'm back to the hoop and quilting on Candied Hexagons. With the completion of each new hexie I am one step closer to the finish line. I think that I've got about 16 left to go - woohoo!

That's 16 of the pieced hexies. Scattered in amongst them are a number of large hexies - not pieced, just dramatic large prints. My next decision will be to figure out how to quilt them as they are all different.

I had toyed with concentric circles or a spiral, but I'm not sure that's a great fit. Randomly following the flowers in each print is an option, too. Maybe I just develop a straight line pattern that works with the others in the quilt?

Hope springs eternal that my progress continues and that I will be needing to be make that decision sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I still have some work ahead of me.

Happy Mother's Day to all that are celebrating today. While I no longer have the blessing of sharing time with mom it will be a good day to fill my thoughts of her as I quilt....M

Two Bindings for Baby

My Moda Love baby quilts have been sitting ready so ship for a couple of weeks now but it's been so busy with work that I'm only sharing them now.

Given that they are for twins I wanted them to be the same, but different, if you know what I mean. So the colours in the stars lean more to blue in one quilt and aqua in the other, and I followed through with that theme with the backings. At one point the bindings were going to be a different colour than the backings, just to keep things scrappy, but when Roberta managed to squeeze enough leftovers out of the backings when she set them up on the longarm I decided to stay with matching backings and bindings.

I'm glad that I did. Because they are for twins they will be seen together a lot I expect, and the quilts look good together without getting too busy.

So it's time to find that 'perfect box' and get them wrapped and shipped. The Official Cookie Tester went on a box recycling binge after Christmas, so my work might be cut out for me....M