Sew Slowly

Just a little over a week ago COVID finally caught up with me. It was inevitable I guess, but not in the least bit welcome. Needless to say, it's been a pretty low energy several days so my plans for Halo never did hit the ground, but occasionally I have picked up Anna Levens.

I haven't worked on this quilt for several months; it was folded up before the holidays and is only resurfacing now to work it's healing powers.

My hexies are basted on an as needed basis and I am amazed that my funky little paper clip is still in the bin after all this time. I use it to secure the fabric to my paper...

and keep it in place until I finish basting the entire thing. It makes all the difference in keeping things secure and minimizing slippage.

I'd hardly say that I made huge progress, but I have managed to finish assembling a row of hexies and getting it attached to one of the sides, which feels good....M

Crawling Out of the Rabbit Hole

Despite my intention to put the little three-inch hearts to one side and move on, I stayed stuck in the rabbit hole of little pieces just a little bit longer.

Actually, long enough to make another baker's dozen.

I kept finding little pink scraps and cutting them up, so of course I just had to see what they look like worked into a heart.

Still very stinkin' cute! But it's time to crawl out of this rabbit hole and move on. This time I'm serious. I think 😉.

I have my heart set on getting Halo off the design wall where it has lived for heaven knows how long now. All of the blocks are finally together, with the exception of the edge pieces. I cut just a few and laid them alongside the blocks but it just wasn't working for me. 

After mulling things for a while I realized that the bottom test piece was too dark; if I continued with shades like this it was going to have a distinct piano key feel, taking away from the circles. Not.

I want subtle with a just a little variation in tone between the pieces to help those circles shine, so I culled my initial fabric selection so that it was much more low volume. Much better....M

My Funny Little Valentine

It's always fun to seek out a new heart to sew to celebrate Valentine's Day and this year I landed on these little 3" sweeties. They are SO cute!

I found them in a Stash Bandit blog post from a few years ago. Assembly is really easy - most of my time was spent digging for scraps and cutting.

I found that for the final seam (the one that runs down the centre of the heart) it's best to start at the top of the heart and work down rather than working from the bottom up so that you get good seam matches. 

I also alternated the direction that the seams at the bottom of the heart were pressed - one to the inside of the heart and one to the outside - so that I could nest them, and it worked really nicely. 

They are really, really cute together. I mean, they're 3 inches! It didn't take much time to get a group of them made and when I saw them all together I thought that including a little envelope block might be fun too. Sweet.

This is just a little diversionary rabbit hole that I've fallen into and I will put them away now. I've got a baker's dozen prepped and can't help but think that it could be a great follow-up to Little Trees. The scrappier it got, the better it would be. 

Happy Valentine's Day!....M

Unbearably Cute

Sandy loves hand quilting and was moving along quite nicely with the hexie quilt I showed you the last time so she was getting ready to machine quilt her little fish, but just like that it was put on the back burner and she headed off to make some pinwheels for a baby quilt (squirrels will do that to you). 

Her first batch was a little too subdued for her liking so a quick trip to the fabric store was in order. The parents weren't sure if they were waiting for a boy or a girl so primary colours (and lots of polka dots!) seemed like a good way to go. Waaaaaay better.

The colours make her happy and they are perfect for a wee one. 

A white border was added and then a piano key border made of the polka dot fabrics.

And she found this absolutely adorable animal backing; I believe that there was going to be a return trip to the fabric shop for more.

And no, you're not seeing double. She loves the pattern so she figured why not make two since all of the math was already done.

Unfortunately, she didn't catch a glitch until she looked at her photos - she had attached the last border backwards so the pattern was messed up - which meant that there was a little blue smoke in the air and some quality time spent with Jack (the Ripper). But she managed to get it all sorted before heading off to bed one night so she was able to sleep easy 😉.

The first one is already bound with this fun and funky little stripe and on it's way to the new mom-and-dad-to-be.

And all of the bits for the second one are on hangers and ready for quilting. There seems to be a “Baby Boom” going on in her circle so you never know when the next one is on its way. Sandy's thinking that baby quilts might now be her favourite thing to make.....M  

Hexie Heaven

Why baste just one quilt when you can do two? After Sandy had finished basting what I am calling Under the Sea she wasted no time moving along and putting Hexie Heaven on the basting table, another colourful beauty. Look at all of those hexies; a girl after my own heart.

During the last year, when she wasn't stitching little fish she's been busy turning her Kaffe jelly rolls into hexies - so colourful! She scored a terrific deal on three of them a while back and managed to find the last one, called Parakeet, online, so that made her really happy.

This project went with her to the lovely island of Male in the Maldives for a dive trip. All of that time in the air resulted in lots of progress. 

While on a stopover in Abu Dhabi she noticed that there was no shortage of hexie inspiration. Just look at that ceiling!

It's a mosaic tile structure; just look at all of the tiny pieces!

The backing is a Kaffe as well, this gorgeous Millefiore print in rich blues, the perfect foil for all those lovely hexies on the front. Luv.

Here's a better shot of the entire top.

She is hand quilting this one, wanting to keep the pattern simple and also maintain the outline of the flowers. There's still some thinking to be done regarding how to quilt the border. She seems to remember seeing a hexie quilt where they’d somehow managed to quilt it looking like lattice work, which sounds lovely, so I suspect that there will be a deep dive into Pinterest one of these days to see if she can find that again. In the meantime, she's enjoying all of those lovely hexie flowers....M