HeLP for Hexie-aholics - 1/17/17

You know you've hit the big time when Google sends you a personalized birthday message. Wink.

Sorry - hard to get a good photo of the laptop screen.
I swear the bottom left says Happy Birthday Sarah!

That's right! Today is the reason that our monthly HeLP for Hexie-aholics is on the 17th of each month. It's my birthday! It's my birthday!

It's been a quiet day so far... I did brunch and cake with the parents on Sunday and Quilt Guild is tonight. I got my free iced coffee at the cafe this morning (can we say caffeine high?!) and I'll get a free chai at the bookstore this afternoon. It's quite different from last year's birthday post and I'm really OK with that!

The top is actually to the left in this photo.
It still needs one more row of the turquoise to match the bottom.

But just for you guys I worked hard to make progress on my owl quilt borders. I worked my fingers to the bone until I ran out of 2" papers. Now it's time to attach what I have so I can free up some papers. I have about a yard left of the turquoise batik so I've got to finish the right side and then more on the top and bottom to make it rectangular in the "right" way, if you know what I mean.

You knew it would come to this, right? He lasted about 7 minutes before going in to attack mode - must be the papers are more exciting than just the blocks that were out for the mystery quilt all weekend.

Of course I gave the boyz a special birthday treat!! It's the only way to get them this close.

And now it's your turn to share your hexie projects. We don't care if your project is new or a UFO - we just want to share in your excitement at making progress. Well that and the proverbial we (me!) can't resist new project ideas!

Have a wonderful day and you feel like it, please send me some SNOW. A blizzard would be fantastic. This gray rain is not appropriate birthday weather for this snow-loving Capricorn...

An InLinkz Link-up

Actual machine sewing!

Yup - you read that correctly - I actually did some machine sewing last Friday. Amazing, huh?!

I started by making a practice block for this quilt I saw in a magazine. The magazine was an impulse purchase on the way to the mountains when I was still ticked off about my car. Should have saved the money to help pay for the car but this was a scrappy quilt magazine and my resolve to not buy magazines had dissolved.

I debated what fabrics to use and then remembered I have a small collection of cat fabrics. I even have a large chunk that would work for a backing - it's the backside of cats. That doesn't sound right - it's not their bums, it's just that they are facing away from the viewer.

I know I needed another project like another hole in the head but without one block to put on the design wall I would have forgotten about this great pattern and it was sew sew easy to do.

I also finally picked some fabrics for my Temecula Quilts summer stars sew along.

You are probably wondering how I came up with that motley crew of fabric and it's because I started with this adorable cupcake fabric. I hope to use the grey for binding or borders or something other than the blocks.

I finished the following blocks last Friday and I think with tomorrow's posting I will have 3 more to do to catch up. Easy Peasy. It's not too late if you want to join in.

I also worked on one of the BOM blocks for a class I teach and had a helper who didn't really want his picture taken...

Block "problems" continue

Sew...I'm hoping you read yesterday's post where I was hurrying and didn't read the directions carefully leading me to frog out some seams and correct 4 square-in-square blocks.

Well...I fixed those and placed the 9 sections on the design wall. This quilt is made up of 9patch star blocks (from EQ7) but there is a lot of give and take with color placement to make the actual block look totally different. These were my 2 options:

After some debate with myself I decided to go with the second option because I thought it looked more like the star blocks we were aiming for.

EXCEPT....when I finally got it all pieced together and really looked at the finished block, I hadn't made the layout I had chosen. I've decided not to re-do the block. I did like both layouts so why not...maybe it was divine intervention. I also have to make my blocks in a different color way so I'll make a better effort to use the other layout in the fall colors.

Design Wall Monday - 8/22/11

Are you a list maker? I am. Having spent last week at the Fair and the week before getting ready for the Fair - I had certain chores that had been seriously neglected for a while. Saturday night I made my honey do list for Sunday and woke up nicely rested. I spent the morning picking up some hotspots (the dots are what's started) while waiting for stuff to load on the computer. By noon I was thoroughly disgusted with the computer and had completely switched to sewing - which I continued doing until I decided I should really make supper at 8pm. Thankfully sewing had been on the list and was the one item I could actually cross off!

Now this certainly wasn't a rocket science project and I wasn't really in a hurry but I finished an ok audio book and started a great one so it was a nice afternoon in my pjs watching thunderstorms come and go while working on this project. I used the "recs" ruler from my tri-recs set to make these rectangles. I had seen a quilt made in this style with various neutrals and red/green Christmas fabrics. I liked the other quilt much better and think it's because these colors are so vibrant and contrasty. There is no mushiness or even scrappiness here at all. Is that maybe why I never use my 30's repros?

Any way...I will be adding borders to the top/bottom to make this a more usable size since it's too big for a runner and too small for even a baby quilt. I'm not sure what it's for, other than to show another design with this ruler set which is a required ruler for a BOM class I will be helping to teach at the LQS.

I would love to see any design ideas you guys have for using the tri/recs ruler so I can share with my students.