HeLP for Hexie-aholics - 5/17/17

Hello one and all and welcome to another rousing edition of Hexie Linky Party!!!!

You think you're surprised to see Z in my lap - try being me!!!
I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with me - it's all about his fav B&W fleece on my lap.

Lest you think I've been a hexie slacker while working on some machine sewing, Zorro and I would like to present proof of 2 more finished Twisted hexies on the coffee table and another started.

My exciting news for today is the announcement of my new 

Hexie Temperature Quilt

 and I hope all y'all will join in with me!!!

BACKGROUND
For anyone not familiar with a temperature afghan or quilt: each day one "'unit" (row, hexie, etc) is made based on the temperature for the day. The colors are predetermined for specific temperature ranges and you can choose to use the high for the day or the temperature at a certain time of the day.

LAYOUT
Thanks to Erin, I've decided to make one 1.5" hexie each day and since there are 7 days in a week as well as 7 hexies in a rosette, I'll be making each "week" into a rosette and then machine appliqueing the rosette onto a 9.5" unfinished neutral square.

This is my planned layout: 52 weeks and 4 empty corner blocks for a 7x8 block layout. I'm not planning any sashing or borders at this time so I'll end up with a 63" x 72" quilt. The EQ7 layout is very rough but if someone wants the file I am happy to share.

TEMPERATURE
I've decided to use the temperature of any given day at 1pm. It's the time I return from lunch most days so I thought it would be easy to remember and it's nearly the hottest time of the day. If I ever forget or don't have cell service (Imagine that?!?!) I will check Weather Underground for the high temp of any particular day.

FABRIC
This is the most fun part, right??!! Not knowing how many days I'll have at any particular temperature and not knowing how much of each fabric to stock up on, Chantal suggested I aim for scrappy. Wonderful! Hoping to include people outside my local temperature norms, I expanded the range pretty far. I certainly don't think I'll be using much brown and you might not be using much white but one never knows...

>100     browns
90-99    maroons
80-89    reds
70-79    oranges
60-69    golds
50-59    bright greens
40-49    dark greens
30-39    dark blues
20-29    dark purples
10-19    light purples
0-9        light pinks
< 0        WOWs


I figited with my fabrics and tweaked the colors a couple times to find what works with my stash. It would be fun if everyone was basically the same to compare apples to apples but you might not like purple as much as I do and I completely understand.

These are the fabrics I used to create my base colors. I had my local print shop make a couple color copies for me this morning and wrote my temperature range next to each FQ. I put the whole thing in a sheet protector and I'll put it on my studio wall tonight. Anything to make it easy to figure out what fabric to use and get those hexies done ASAP.

My friend Cathy is going to join in and she hopes to fussy cut fabrics for special holidays and birthdays. That will be fun to see!

Sew??!!!

What do you think?????

Would you like to play along???

I would love to hear if you're going to play along, if I left anything out of the directions and if you would like the details in a tab at the top of my blog. You might even run home to make a hexie and link it up tomorrow. Hint. Hint.

As always, I hope you will link up a hexie project to my linky party, temperature quilt or not. The project can be of any vintage or paper shape/size.

An InLinkz Link-up

Design Wall Monday - 5/1/17

Happy May Day!!
I missed the annual May Day Breakfast at the church 3 doors up from my house. We had a fire call at 11pm and a rescue call at 3am - both were false alarms so all with well except I slept in a bit and completely forgot the breakfast until I was leaving for work. The church has been doing a May Day breakfast for 124 years - are there any local churches that do a breakfast near where you live?

Sew...
Did you miss me last week? I was away at 2 conferences - one in Buffalo and one in Rochester. Of course working extra before and after to get the work done. Ah...the woes of a one woman office...

Luckily they were the type of conferences where I can sit and stitch while listening to the speakers - in fact, I listen better when my fingers were busy and that means I got a lot of hexie work accomplished. Woohoo!!

I started with getting three of these rosettes together. These chrysanthemums are the birthday shapes from our hexie club from 2015. I think I am now more than halfway done. They will be machine appliqued on to a background for a lap size quilt and I hope to get the background pieced soon now that I have found more shot cotton in the color I needed.

Then I moved to these Salt & Pepper blocks. All the blocks have black-on-white jewels around a white-on-black hexie surrounded by burnt orange diamonds. I had the centers done a while ago so I just needed to baste and stitch on the diamonds.

Next up were more twisted hexies. This will be a bed size quilt when it's done and it's one of my top 3 hexie UFOs to finish this year. I keep changing my mind which I want to focus on this year. These pieces had to all be basted and stitched together.

And finally, I finished stitching on the final hexie for my 3D project. Woohoo! The cardinal fabric on the right was the inspiration fabric and will be used as the backing.

Normally I take papers out as I stitch along, especially when I need to reuse papers instead of buying them. Apparently I didn't need to reuse the papers cuz here they all are. It won't take all that long, it's just something I need to add to the honey-do list.

And because you know I can't resist... I am pretty sure this is going to be my next doll quilt. I recently saw a gorgeous yellow and gray quilt and I think this design will work well with that color scheme. The central hexies will all be the same gray while the triangles will be various bright yellows. I purchased the gray and first yellow yesterday - now I just need to find a ton more yellows to add variety.

Hey - an actual wall for Design Wall Monday. LOL.
My fav brother installed the fan and dad make the rosette to
cover the hole left by the old off-center light

And lest you think I'm a one trick pony - I've finally got some color on my bedroom walls. I was hoping that one coat would do it but that's not the case. #2 will be going on later this week. I'm trying to rest my self-diagnosed golf elbow which is exacerbated by repetitive motions like painting and hexing...cuz y'all should know that the closest I get to golfing is the annual golf tournament for our fire department. No matter what, I read that not taking care of it right away can make it a chronic condition and I've already ignored it for several weeks...

Design Wall Monday - 4/11/16

Salt & Pepper blocks completed in MD

I'm baaaaaacccckkkkk!

Twisted hexie blocks and extra black centers completed in MD

Didja miss me?

"house" blocks completed in MD for hexie club birthday swap

As you may recall, I disappeared from the blog for a week of laziness after a long Easter weekend to visit my uncle in Baltimore and then for a 2nd week after being sick. I may have disappeared from the blog but I was still working on projects in the background.

pieced hexie blocks for Mickey Depre's 2016-17 sampler.
These were machine sewn before the trip. During the trip I trimmed seam allowances and basted them.

I suppose your first question is what happened to my March quilt lab clean up project. Since I was out of town, sick and I'm now getting ready to go out of town not just once but three times, it's been placed on hold or maybe delayed is a better word.

I've been trying to catch up on my i-spy blocks since vacation.
This pile of 30 blocks has the wonky black-on-black borders attached.
They were later trimmed down to 6.75" square - a boring job if ever there was one :(

 Let's just say that I'm still working on cleaning the lab but it's taking longer than expected since life has gotten in the way. I'm not surprised. Are you? I highly doubt that it will be finished in the next month or 2 due to a big project so lets just call it a longer term (summer?) project.

more twisted and pieced blocks completed at home

I expect there will be hexie finishes in the next month and there are also new projects so there will be plenty to entertain you in my ongoing hexie UFO saga....

All but 4 of the I-spy blocks are completed. I've got them layed out sorted by left
 /right angles and by which BOB fabric so I can keep it balanced.
I know - it's a little OCD.
I'll be at several quilt stores this weekend to look for more hexie fabrics and then
I'll start to sew them together. I have 90 hexie fabrics as of today!!!
Some are the same pattern but in different colors - there are prob 80 different patterns.

Back to the Design Wall...

I sell name badge holders at one of my conferences -- this is batch #1.
This is a new (requested!) pattern since the girls wanted zippered compartments.
I hope they like them...

We traveled to Baltimore, Maryland for a long Easter weekend and then stopped in Intercourse, PA on the way home. That meant that I had 10 hours travel time for stitching as well as tv time at my uncle's house. I was quite productive, if I say so myself. Of course, I still packed 3 times too much (this is what happens when the supplies take up so little space) but it was nice to switch projects now and then.

I've started to make some of the blue pieced hexies for Mickey's pieced sampler

Since returning home, I've finished some of the projects started on the road trip and worked on others as well. I have not one but 2 conferences this weekend so there will be plenty of stitching time - I just need to pack enough to keep my fingers busy which helps me concentrate in the classes better.

I finished the left card trick block and made a second.
I will make at least 2 more and then assess what to add for the proper doll quilt size.

I had originally intended to lay them out with the teal always in the upper left but I layed one of them
 down backwards and I'm kinda liking what will become a teal 'X' and a purple 'O''. 

Quilt lab cleanup post #1

Project background: I'm spending the month of March cleaning up my quilt lab and blogging about all my hexie UFOs along the way...

--------------
I didn't see Janet's request to start with the curio cabinet until after I had already started on the cutting mat so I'll do the cabinet next.

I had chosen to start with the cutting mat because it's kind of grand central for my quilt lab - everything seems to start and stop here. And apparently a lot gets dumped here as well! I thought a nice/large/clean area would be very encouraging for the rest of the project.

This is what I started with. Not the worst I've ever had but not the best either considering I could only use about 11" x 20" on a 24" x 36" mat.

We have a monthly birthday swap in hexie club and Denise is our penpal member.
I finally sorted her envelope of birthday shapes into the storage bin with my prepared shapes.

This weekend I had been working on my hexie iSpy quilt by cutting more 5" squares
of hexie fabrics and black wedges. When I started cleaning I had 52 blocks made, 29 cut and 4 more to cut.

While cleaning, I cut the last 4 and put it all the parts back into it's bin.
 This will be a nice no-brainer project when I'll have an hour to sew.

Hmmm..left over fabric from Value Proposition...put this in the fabric-to-put-away- pile.

I'm working on a kind of new project and decided I would use my Fiskars cutter to cut our 1/2" hexies from all those annoying magazine inserts. I cut a page worth this morning while I was waiting for the car to warm and maybe melt some of the ice encrusting it. Not sure where to store this unless I just gitter done and put the hexies in with the project and put the Fiskars away.

The 3 shot cottons were on the cutting mat since I had cut the olive green a few weeks ago. The round tin usually contains the finished Chrysanthemums I spread out and the choco tin held the rest needing to be put together. These are the 2016 birthday swap shape and I'd like to get the background sewn together ASAP so I know how many more chrysanthemums to make but I might need to get more olive shot cotton first...

Hah! - found an empty plastic bin to store the fabric and to-be-completed chrysanthemums in.

These are from my POTC project. For a while I had some spare bits at my couch work station to use thread ends. Not sure why it was on the cutting table but I finished these up while watching TV and put them away in the POTC box.

This is new fabric for a hexie project that I haven't picked yet - I just couldn't pass on the pretty fabric.
I put it in the someday pile.

And this is what I ended with!! Woohoo!! I spent time doing tiny bits of work to finish parts of the projects so it prob took a bit longer than I had originally planned but it's nice to have those bits done.

The tin holds batik strips to trim into half hexies for my Twisted hexie project.

Lookie there - I trimmed them up this morning, set the tin aside to house another project and now
my cutting mat is 99% clean with just my rotary cutter at the ready and my hexie rock.

Yipp - that was 8 hexie UFOs/WIPs on just my cutting mat. This is gonna be a loooooooooong clean up...

Design Wall Monday - 2/29/16

Happy Leap Day!!!

One would have expected me to have gotten a lot of hexies done last week, given that I was busy doing things other than blogging. Didn't happen :(  I had my nights free last week but I wasn't making great progress and it was getting frustrating so I was stitching slower.  Over the weekend we attended 2 hockey games for my nephews followed by lotsa family time. We had a great time but I was wasn't making much progress on the hexie front.

Black hexies (really each hexie shown above is a small rosette) are completed.
I need at least 30 more small rosettes.
Yikes! I really underestimated.

My original hope for the month had been to get the twisted hexie top done. My hope for the weekend had been to get all the small rosettes attached to the mother ship. Turns out I had no where near as many small rosettes as I would need to finish the top. Bummer! I guess this is going to become my March goal too...

This quilt is looking much wider than longer to me so I best test it on the bed to double check.
I need to fill in the top and bottom on the right and one large rosette on the left. 

Tonight? I'll be cutting more batiks...

Be sure to check in tomorrow - it's not only our monthly Bibliophile Files report but I'll share some info on a special hexie project I am planning for the month...something I feel safe in not blaming Janet for one single bit !! ;)

HeLP for Hexie-aholics - 2/17/16

So...you might have heard....

I'm gonna guess this is at lest 12 inches if it's an inch

We got a little snow yesterday!

I spent a good 45 minutes shoveling my 4-car-length driveway and that was with the help of a neighbor walking by who helped shovel the end of the drive (always the worst part!). It was still kinda early so I decided to do a quick walk around the block. When I got back to the house I shoveled again - we had gotten 2" in the time it took me to shovel and the plow had come thru and filled in the end of the drive again. The same neighbor was walking back home and again helped with the end of the drive.

Denise says I'm a disorganized shovel-er! I say fitbit GPS can't handle small spaces as there is no way I shoveled the street, the neighbor's yard and over my house. I tried this once when I was mowing and it said I mowed right over the entire house. I. Don't. Think. So!

Luckily while I was at work, another neighbor blew out the 4 or 5 inches that came in during the day and I just had to shovel the end again when I got home last night and again before I left this morning. Rochester Airport (50+ miles away) had a record breaking 16" for the day. Not sure what out total was...

Zorro likes to play with snowballs. Who knew??!!

Of course, Zorro had to investigate! The yellow lines denote the height of the drift between street and sidewalk thanks to the plows, the drift on my side of the sidewalk where I piled it and then ground level. Those drifts are pretty high but most of it will melt by the weekend as we are expecting 40F on Friday.

And now...on to hexies!

I swear on Zorro's B&W fluffy tukus that I didn't plan this - it just happened!

I can't say this has been my most prolific week but I did make some progress on a couple projects.

I'm still trying to get all the small rosettes stitched that I had cut out some time ago. This includes more monochromatic rosettes like the red which are at the center of each large rosette.

On Saturday I worked at the LQS which pays me in fabric. There was a pretty brown/green/teal floral that I just "had" to have but I wanted to pick a hexie project for it so I didn't get too much or too little fabric. In the process of looking for a project I also found another to use one of my fav dark purple fabrics. I did just enough to get it started and out of my system and now I can go back to the twisted project which I was supposed to be working on...

And now my friends - it's your turn to share your hexie projects.

It doesn't matter the paper shape or whether your project is new or a UFO - we just want to be inspired!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Design Floor Monday - 2/8/16

I just finished a weekend of quilt retreat and I was able to finish my goal for the weekend. Woohoo!

I didn't take a before picture of the actual hexies but I think you'll get the idea with this:

This is my layout in EQ7. Each hexie in the picture is actually what I call a small rosette such as this partial one I was working on:

I've been making large rosettes by encircling a monocromatic small with 6 other mixed color rosettes.

Back to the EQ7 screen shot... As I attached large rosettes to each other I blackened the hexies. I was trying to balance the monochromatic rosettes so those where colored instead of blackened as they were attached. Make sense?

Over the weekend I was able to attach 6 more large rosettes!!!!

My diagram now looks like the next screenshot which I would say is some dramatic progress!

I've got a pile of small rosettes and a pile of fabric cut to make more. My week's focus will be to make more small rosettes. I have another quilt retreat next weekend - I'll either spend the time finishing the fabric pile to make more small rosettes or start making the pile of small rosettes into large rosettes. That decision will be made Friday before I leave for work and not a second sooner.

Oops, almost forgot - here's the real deal with QCOs checking it out...

Other than Squeaks was mad with Z for getting too close, I think it passed inspection and has been properly furred...

Linking to Design Wall Monday.

HeLP for Hexie-aholics - 12/17/15

Welcome to the Ho Ho Ho edition of Hexie Linky Party for the lovers of EPP!!!

Photobombed!!

I thought I would start today with my new Christmas dress.

It's kinda hard to take a full length selfie so I added this closeup. Just promise to ignore the damp hair from walking in the rain. Fantastic dress, no?

I've been working on my Twisted Hexies since the last HeLP and it feels so good to have a large portion of it together. Nowhere near half together but it's great to see it in such a large piece. I have a number of the large rosettes made already but I've been focusing on making more smaller rosettes which are easier for lunch hours or the last spare minutes before bed. After Christmas I can pull out the big guns on this project again.

I've been using this new little yardstick box to hold my rosette parts while I work. It was part of a squishy I won from Janet a few weeks ago!!!!

She included a mini candy bar/2.5" squares, a tiny little stocking to add to my small collection and her scrumptious homemade soaps. You know I'll come up with some hexie pattern for the fabric squares :)

Gotta love the 2 kick-pleats and attached neck scarf!

OK - back to that dress. Ya'll don't really believe me do you? Anyone local would have started laughing riotously as soon as I said I was going to wear a dress and continued laughing when I said I was wearing it on a holiday. This jeans and a t-shirt gal is very very very very very very rarely seen in a dress - especially a fitted one. The LQS owner who initiated and continues to promote my hexie obsession, Claudia, found it at Goodwill a few weeks back. I may have lost a couple pants sizes walking for the last 6 months and this dress is supposedly in my old size but you can probably tell from the first photo that there is no way this will fit - it's not even zipped. Maybe by next Christmas!  Just to give my family a fright!

Ok, my hexie friends, it's now your turn. What projects are you dreaming of? Working on? Found in the back of the closet or finished for Christmas? Do share!!

An InLinkz Link-up