Feline Friday - 10/30/15

No peas under all my yummy quilts, Momma!
I can sleep like a princess here!

An InLinkz Link-up

HeLP for Hexie-aholics - 10/17/15

Welcome to another edition of Hexy Linky Party! I hope you've had fun working on or planning your own projects since the last time we checked in!

My plus quilt is basted and about one-third quilted!!!

These pictures were taken yesterday. It's incredibly hard to tell in this photo that it's partially quilted and there are a bunch of threads to bury already. I always used to tie off my threads and have this ugly little fuzzy knot showing on the back but I recently saw a video that makes it pretty easy to bury them and it looks fantastic. It's well worth the extra time.

My quilting design is basically a side to side squiggle in the house shapes. I start at a fat end, squiggle down to the middle, cross over the center and then squiggle back out to the opposite fat end. Super easy. My squiggles aren't perfect but I like the imperfections. This ain't no robot quilting this baby!

I'm really liking how the squiggles nestle together on the back of the quilt!

You're probably thinking that I should have quilted in a more organized order from one side of the quilt to the other but, in reality, I was looking at what partial bobbins I had that matched and maybe I could finish. I love projects that finish partial bobbins!

OK, my friends! What's going on in your hexie world? What projects are you working on? Pulling out of  the depths of your UFO pile? Planning something new?

Do tell!!!!

An InLinkz Link-up

My next mission...

...should I choose to accept it...and I will!!

Is to finish trimming the excess white from the right side and remove all the papers.

I hope to have it basted tonight or tomorrow which really depends on how long our board meeting lasts tonight.

 I'm really excited about the quilting pattern I've decided on. I hope it looks as good as I am envisioning it :)

I've purchased a #71 flat fell foot for my Bernina after watching a video that make it look easier to machine sew binding. Keep your fingers crossed the video was realistic!

Design Wall Monday - 10/5/15

Yesterday started with a long agenda but even tho I stayed in bed an extra hour to read email/etc on my phone, much to the chagrin of a certain B&W cat who wanted OUT, I still accomplished quite a bit!!

First I frogged out the stitching on 4 of these black eyed susan rosettes since I couldn't think of 8 more/different designs and the effect wasn't spectacular. I finally decided to use the cat print for backing since the gold rosettes matched the gold cats. After spray basting the layers I did one round of SITD quilting. I made the binding with a fab dark green. I just saw a video yesterday on using a #71 Bernina flat fell foot to sew on bindings...if I can find the foot soon I would like to give it a try...

Next I top stitched the hexies to the side panels and then trimmed them to size. It turned out to be an easy decision to make the right hand side of the hexies as the exact center of the quilt - It's 10" to each side from the center. I was thrilled to see that I had enough of the dot, plum and floral fabrics to do the back the way I wanted. When the center is quilted, I'll be able to fold the back to the front and stitch it down so that the dot is over the floral, the floral is over the dot and the plum is over the hexies. Picking a quilting pattern on this one is gonna take me some time...

Last but not least I made lotsa progress on my plus quilt. I picked fabrics for the last of the 14 colored pluses and started stitching the top together. The colored pluses will definitly be done by week's end but I'm not sure about adding in the white.

Of course, while working at the LQS Saturday, I was showing off the pluses and that gave my boss an idea to do a red/pink/white Valentine's X and O quilt. So yeah, I started another doll quilt but it should be an easy finish. Luckily I am paid in fabric!! It's looking more and more like I am going to have lotsa holiday doll quilts for the dolly cat bed!

Discombobulated

As happens with everyone - everything is happening at once and I'm all discombobulated with what to work on next! There is no focus at my house....

---The last day to buy doe tags is tomorrow so my day job has been busy with hunters.
---September dog licenses are due today as well as all the people who are super late and got court tickets so my day job has been busy with dog owners.
---School taxes are due today so my 2nd job has been busy with an extra ~3 hours a day to keep up. Most people mail their taxes today, depending on the postmark to keep them "on time" so that big bundle will arrive on my desk Friday which could take 4 or 5 hours to process.
---Tonight I have to take down our hexie club quilt exhibit and tomorrow I need to make an apple crisp for the hexie club meeting on Friday - we are celebrating our third anniversary!!!!!!!!
---Saturday I'm working all day at the LQS for their 5 year anniversary party.

I don't mind each activity in itself but with all this in 6 days by the time I get home at night, I'm whooped and just need something simple to work on!

On Monday, I was trying to think about what I can finish before the 2 trunk shows (now just 8 and 20 days away). The doll quilt needs some sit down time at my Bernina so that is on schedule for Sunday. That brought me back to my plus quilt. I started pulling fabrics which created a mess while I decided on fabric combos.

That reminded me of a small project that was barely started but could make a good example for the second show. You can barely see the small plastic box on the near side of the mess...it's a stack of 2" squares of graduated hand dyes bought at a quilt show a year or so ago. Each graduation has 6 shades and there were no color repeats in the box. It's perfect for 3/4" rosettes! I had made the yellow one eons ago but decided to pull this out to work on piecemeal when I have short threads from other projects in the next few weeks. Well, that was the plan cuz here it is Wednesday morning and I have 2 done already.

Last night I cut out 4 sets of plus block and got the olive green set made...7 more to go...

This morning I pulled out my very first hexie project. I SWEAR it's the perfect doll quilt size by chance!!! It's still just a top because I had this grand idea of a fake trapunto effect under the center of each black eyed susan but ran out of ideas after just 4 of them. In the end it isn't a very exciting effect.

Today I'm going to decide if I should:  --come up with 8 more designs, --rip out the 4 designs and just leave them blank or --pick my fav design, rip out the other 3 and do them all the same. I'll add this project to Sunday's Bernina time.

I still need to stitch the facing on a topper and work on filling in the triangle edges for Value Proposition...any body know where I can purchase about 10 extra hours a day?

HeLP for Hexie-aholics - 9/17/15

Woohoo!!!! It's the 17th of the month and that makes it our monthly Hexie Linky Party!
Today I'm sharing the short (?) evolution of a recent project that was supposed to be simple.
Yeah right, bwahahahahaha.

Months ago I found this picture on The Evil Website:

I saved the photo to my desktop so I could figure out how I was going to make it. The link said she couldn't find the papers and had drafted her own but when I re-read it the last time and found that she said something about pentagons, I searched paperpieces.com for pentagons and found the house shape which would work perfectly! I promptly ordered them! I just needed to decide on fabric...

Having some fabric left from our Hexie club logo project, I decided to pull fabrics in the same color families and started making pluses. I put a few up on the wall and started on more. I started rearranging them on the wall and finally decided I really needed to come up with a final layout so I wouldn't make more than I needed for the project, given my short time frame for finishing projects (3 weeks from today is my first trunk show).

I finally pulled up EQ7 and found a "plus" block which I modified to better match the house shaped plus blocks.

I soon discovered that I couldn't design the final layout with just that one block and finally created a larger grid all at once. I wouldn't want to create a human bed sized quilt this way so there must be an easier way that I couldn't find...

Since this project will end up on the dolly cat bed, I sized it to be 18"x24" even tho this graphic looks almost square.

Next it was time to play with colors - ignore the colors in the drawings I just picked anything not what actually matches that beautiful batik.
--My first idea (left) was to copy the pinterest photo verbatim and have diagonal lines of color and white pluses. It probably shows the colors off the best.
--My second idea (middle) was to only have the colored pluses in the middle and any outside (full or partial) plus was white. I just felt this was too little color and quite lopsided.
--My third idea (right) was to have any full plus be colored and any partial plus is white - still lopsided but lots of color - and I'll have to cut down all of the white pluses I've made so far..

So far I am thinking that the third option gives me the most color but the first option makes the best use of the work I've put into the project so far.

I think any of the 3 options will be very pretty. Which is your favorite??!!

Ok, my fellow hexie-ologists, now it's your turn to share your EPP projects. Any shape or vintage is fair game - we just want to see what you're working on!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Design Wall Monday - 9/14/15

As predicted, the weekend was a wet mess so there was no walking or hiking in the park after working the 5K. The race went off with out a hitch but I was already wet enough from working that I just wanted to get home into some dry clothes. In all, we got 2" of much needed rain. And let me tell you, I LOVE the sound of a gentle rain...especially when I am inside and dry ;-)

Once home I had to make the decision of what hexies to work on for the weekend since there are just 24 days until my first trunk show and then 12 more until the second. Ackckckckckckck!

I was aiming for what I thought would be an easy finish project. Boy was I misguided. I had already cut out some colored bits and some WOW bits for this project. I stitched all the colored bits together and then stitched the white bits. Then I decided I really need to finalize the layout I wanted before putting any more bits together. Out came EQ7 and oops...I think my fav design means I need more colored bits and less white bits.

But, Wait!, you say, Where are the pictures?! I'm withholding them until Thursday which is our next Hexie Linky Party. That gives me a little more time decide which is really my fav design and if I can come up with enough colored bits.

On Sunday, I needed a quick to-go project so I pulled out a UFO!

When I originally found a picture of this pillow on Manuela's website a couple of years ago I was much newer to hexies and was going to strictly copy the pillow idea for lack of any inventiveness on my part. Fast forward to Summer 2015 when I now have a dolly bed that needs a stack of dolly quilts!!

I really like that this is a strip of vertical hexies flanked by 2 different fabrics. I had found the floral fabric at a non-LQS and was just lucky enough to find the perfectly matching coordinates at my LQS back when I first started this project. I had even already cut a lot of little fabric pieces (I'm using .5"' hexie papers!) and already made 2 rosettes.

I finished a couple more rosettes and I've now brought the whole shebang to work for lunch hours and guild meeting tomorrow night. Wish me luck that I can get the strip done this week or early next week and then get the top done in time for my trunk shows!

Yeah, as much as I would like to bring only quilted and bound projects to my trunk shows, I am now aiming for finishing as many tops as possible and I'll use each top as a teaching experience for fussy cutting or construction or ???. I'll quilt and bind the quilts for future trunk shows.

PS - I would love some name suggestions for this dolly quilt so I can create a blog label. I'm never good at names and today I'm too chilly to think straight...