hoop-la-la swap - received

Yeah... Like three months ago. I can't believe I haven't written about it on the blog yet considering how fantastically freaking awesome it is. Better late than never, right?

Jennie from Jennie's Threads made this for me during Allegory's hoop-la-la swap back in November. It's English paper pieced and she showed such an attention to detail! See that sewing machine there? It's pieced from 1/4 inch hexagons. Incredible.

She wrote a pretty detailed post about it way back when she made it, won't you go check it out and leave her some love? She deserves it. Go on... I'll wait. She even sent along some of those teeny hexie templates for me to play with, if I ever work up the nerve.

So anyways, it's hanging in my sewing room and I love it to death. The intricate piecing, the lovely use of vibrant color and low volume. The intermittent hand quilting for texture. Plus tiny patchwork and EPP are totally my thing, she gets me.

Spot on, Jennie! Thank you so so much and apologies for not bragging on it sooner. I'm just plain slow at most things these days.

flowerburst hexie progress

I finished stitching up the last couple seams on this flowerburst hexie block last night. The sides of these blocks are finishing at about four inches. So let's see... if I want a finished queen sized-quilt, that would be roughly 24 blocks long and 22 blocks wide. Which would be a total of 528 blocks. WHAT?! Can that even be possible? Someone check my math and tell me I'm wrong, please.

flowerburst hexie

Nevermind, I just checked it myself and I definitely was wrong. No big surprise there! While the sides may be four inches, the diameter at their widest point is eight. That means 12 blocks long and 11 blocks wide, totaling 132 blocks. That sounds a LOT more doable. Just to be safe, go ahead and check that math for me, would ya? I don't have the best track record in regards to calculating quilt pattern dimensions.

FBH group shot

Here they all are together. I have 15 of them so far. Yikes, this may take a while! It's quite a bit of effort to get those little half-hexies basted and stitched in there, but I'm sticking with it because I think they look pretty cool this way.

leaning tower of hexies

There's no deadline in mind, obviously. I tend to have a hard time with those, have you noticed?! It'll be years, for sure. I think there are about 35 hexie flowers waiting for borders. This project has it's own plastic storage box that is handy for grabbing to take along on car rides, so I'll be bringing it with me this week for all the Fourth of July traveling we have planned :D


Linking up with Jenna over at her Manic Monday linky party!

rockin' weekend recap - it's a doozy

Hey there. It's been busy over here, but I had so much fun in the last few days and thought I'd share some highlights. It all started when I finally got the motivation to put up a rad design wall in the new sewing room.

rad new design wall

You can't hardly tell from the photo, but it's pieced together and covers the whole entire wall. I know, not really necessary, but I had enough material. So why not go overboard?

Stats:
2 30x60in sheets of 1/2 in thick white foam board (which we cut in half at the store so it would fit in the car)
1 king sized 100% polyester batting (cotton batting has an ivory color to it, I wanted white)
3M adhesive strips for hanging

All in all it took an evening and about 30 bucks. I could have simply tacked some batting to the wall like I had before in the dining room, but this looks much better and I deserve the very best :P

project gingham, underway

I was trying to get as much done on my gingham quilt before leaving town for the weekend, but pressing seams open sure is tedious. I had reasons for doing it that way, but now I'm thinking it's a waste of time. Especially with the Project Gingham deadline fast approaching! Someone needs to hurry the heck up, already.

windows down, needle in hand

We then skipped town and headed to my future in-laws' place for the weekend. Did I forget to mention that the boy and I are getting married? Oops. Like I said, lots going on over here. Anyways, I brought along my first ever EPP project, these hexie flowers which I started back in January and am now bordering to make big hexagons.

uh oh, where are you taking me?!

What's super fun about the boy is how spontaneous and awesome he is. There I was, happy to sit and stitch and devour peach cobbler with his mom on the back patio, when suddenly we're headed off to a hillbilly pasture party involving lots of food, beer, live music (the boy and his friend sang folk rock songs, swoon!) loud mouths and laughter. Good times all around.

a mud-splattered Lucy-goose

Of course the dog was loving every moment of this adventure, too. We ended up camping out on a sandbar off the river, complete with tents and fishing poles and Sam Adams. Too much fun, really. But the next day was over a 100 degrees and the AC went out, so not everything was perfect. I did manage to get three blocks finished during stolen moments at the house or in the car. This one is my favorite.

a flower burst hexagon

I've decided to name it a flower burst hexie block, and while I'm sure it's been done before I can't find anyone to credit, so that's what I'm calling it. And if you're on instagram, I'm using #projectflowerbursthexie to tag all my photos so they can be in one place. And if you're doing Project Gingham with us, we're using #projectgingham to keep track of our progress. I also made a Project Gingham Flickr group, too!

I'm linking up with Quilt Story today for Fabric Tuesday. Head over and check out what else is there!

Ok that's it. Phew. Long post. Also my 100th in just over a year. I've come a long way since the very first. Thanks for sticking with me!

some progress + exciting news :D

My sister thought I needed to post again, so I took some quick pics of things I accomplished recently.

I had been adding the gray borders on each star, but now I think it will be easier to arrange the blocks to my liking if I wait to do that until they're all done. I don't want to risk having two of the same print touch each other, that's the challenge I set forth for this project. The star points can't be pieced in until they are made into half hexagons with the gray, so you'll notice in the picture that they aren't actually sewed on yet.

And I'm slowly adding borders to my hexie flowers, an EPP project. Very slowly! It'll be a long while before this quilt gets finished.

Drumroll please... My best pal and roommate for the last 15 months will be moving out tomorrow. I'll miss him, but am SO ready to get my sewing room back!!!! Whoo hoo!

Ok, that is all for now. Have a great weekend :D

My Love Affair with EPP

Since I have no Valentine, (ick! who needs one?) I'm professing my love for English paper piecing instead. It's more like that disgusting, obsessive, quit hanging out with your friends because you've fallen off the face of the planet sort of love, but I'm ok with that. Judge all you want. I'm HAPPY.

hexie flower hexies

I know what you're thinking... Maybe if I put down the needle and thread and ventured out of my living room for a change I might find myself a man. Meh.

The other day I stopped to get an oil change. While the guy behind the counter seemed to be flirting with me, I decided to walk across the parking lot to the LQS and peruse the fat quarters instead of chatting with him while I waited. Once I returned he got back to asking 20 questions, attempting to find out if I was on the market. After telling him I spent nearly all my free time quilting, he straight up inquired if it was because I had no man to tend to. Huh. We laughed because he was spot on and we both knew it.

and another pic to prove this post does in fact belong on a quilty blog

Unfortunately for this guy, he didn't meet my very basic requirements. Since my pool of possible valentines is so incredibly vast (ha) I can afford to be picky. I'll share a few things I need from a man in order for him to have a chance with this fine behind.

- Must be able to fix a sewing machine.
- Must enjoy tolerate holding bolts of fabric so my hands are free to look for more bolts of fabric.

- Must be tall enough to hold up a queen size quilt for photographing without it touching the ground (preferably his footwear would be visible, but let's not get too specific!)
- Must have a mother who owns a long arm and would let me use it anytime I want (bonus points if she has a giant stash for me to pilfer)
- Must know to gift me a bundle of fat quarters on Valentine's day (and any other holiday) rather than flowers or chocolate or diamonds. Ok maybe I'd take diamonds, but you get the idea.
- Must make the mad cash so I can quit my job and be a SAHQ (stay at home quilter) for the rest of my life.

Are my expectations too high? Methinks not.

Oh and thanks for all the feedback on my Star Flower block (in the last post), it's so nice to ask for opinions and get such good ones! I'll be sharing pics of the finished product once the sun shows itself long enough for me to take some.

Liking up with Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday :D

Rose Star block #2 + hexie flower hexies

This is my second attempt at a Rose Star block, you can find a tutorial by Clare here.

After finishing 45 hexie flowers I've decided on how I want to piece them together. I'm adding a border to each one so they finish as hexagons, 7 inches side to side.

After making three I wished I had used two similar colored prints for each background like I had with the flowers. I'm gonna do the rest like this and maybe I'll fix the first three later. Or maybe they'll blend right in and I won't have to!

I'm now realizing the amount of work I have ahead of me but hopefully I won't run out of steam :D

Linked up over at Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday!

A little desert R&R + hexie progress

Spent the past week visiting my sister's family out in Phoenix. I met my newest niece (5 weeks) and spent lots of time bonding with her older sister (24 months).

The new big sis and I just loved playing with hexagons. She'd count their sides and chew on them and spread my neat little piles out all over the place. Great fun!

I cut and packed bunches of scrappy 2.5in squares so I could EPP to my heart's content while away from home base.

I even assembled a travel sewing kit complete with everything I needed for making 4 or 5 hexie flowers at a time. The nail clippers make for excellent thread snippers.

I made about 12 more while on vacation, bringing the completed flower count up to 43. I'm using these for the Scrap Attack QA.

Not bad, right? I stole moments to sew during nap time, plane or car rides and evenings spent in front of the tv after bonzos were in bed for the night.

It's back to the needle and thread for me!

Rose Star + Hexie Flowers

Now that I'm way into English paper piecing (EPP), I couldn't resist trying out Clare's Rose Star tutorial. This guy was a bit more complicated than the hexie flowers I've been making.

I learned EPP using plastic templates, so I used a plastic file folder and the paper cutter at work to make templates for this block. I was quite pleased with my ingenuity! They work great, but definitely can't be ironed over...

And here are the latest hexie flowers.

Hexilicious!

Oh yeah!

Here's what I have so far and I like how it's shaping up so, so much.

So much that I expanded my fabric picks and acquired quite ambitious stacks of squares.

I'll keep going until I tucker out on hexies, at which point any leftover cuts will be ready to use for some other project down the road.

Linked up at Sew Many Ways and Quilt Story!

Hexie Fever + Scrap Attack

I can add hexies to my list of newly acquired skills. I'm obsessed with these little guys. Now I have something quilty to play with while I'm traveling. Or lounging on the couch. Or whenever I feel like it, which has been any free moment for over a week now.

I dug into my scrap stash and had a whole stack of these flowers made by the time I saw my bloggy pal Elizabeth's post and realized this would be a perfect project for Rachel's scrap attack thingy. What a happy coincidence :D

I like how the only rules are that you use scraps and finish it my March. This gives me complete creative control which works best for me if there is a deadline, lol. We'll see what happens!