Hexie Stars Update

Happy Valentine's Day! It's been snowing here all afternoon. My husband took the dog for a walk to the creek in the back of our property, but I'm quite content to sit here in the living room, enjoying the nice fire he built for me!

I've been slow stitching on my second star for my Hexie Stars quilt. Here is the center rosette. The center looks really dark in this photo, but it's the same Kaffe Fassett grape shot cotton that I used for the center of my first star.

 Here is one of the rosettes for the star point. I have two finished and I'm working on the third.

 None of the rosettes are sewn to each other, but this gives you an idea of how this star is shaping up:

What slow stitching have you been up to lately? I'm linking up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Sarah's HeLP for Hexie-aholics.

Happy stitching!

Hexi Star #1 finished

I've finally finished the first star for my Hexi Stars quilt. Well, I actually finished it a few weeks ago, but I'm just now getting a chance to post it!

We had a little plumbing issue, so we had to take almost everything out of my quilting studio for the plumber to get at the plumbing behind the walls in there. Thankfully, there wasn't any water damage! However, everything is piled up on the ping-pong table and the family room floor, so I'm a bit unorganized with the quilting supplies right now. Instead of spending my time working on quilts, I've been taking some time to organize and purge everything. Since the studio is basically cleared out, I do not want to put anything back in there that I don't actually want or need! My husband got the new sheetrock put up this weekend and he is mudding it as I type. Next we need to paint, then I can start moving everything back in.

I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Sarah's HeLP for Hexie-aholics (jump over to Sarah's to wish her a happy birthday...she's offering up a little "prize" in honor of her birthday).

Happy stitching!

Slow Stitching

Hello, Friends!

Now that the craziness of the first few months are school are over (including Parent-Teacher Conferences this past week), I feel like I can take a deep breath, relax, and check in with my quilty friends!

Although I haven't blogged since August, I have been taking time in the evenings and weekends to do some stitching. Even if I can only find 15 minutes to stitch one seam, I find that hand stitching is so relaxing, and I prefer to keep my hands busy when I'm watching TV ~ otherwise, watching TV seems like a waste of time to me!

I'm almost finished with the first star for my Hexi Stars EPP quilt:

 

Since the star is getting larger, I've been mostly working on it at home. When I'm out and about (or riding in the car), I've been basting hexies for the next star, although I don't have any photos of those yet.

 

I have been so focused on this quilt, I haven't really made any progress on my hexi QOV quilt or my redwork Winter Wonderland quilt. Not that I mind...none of these 3 quilts have any sort of deadline. They are for my pure enjoyment of slow stitching!

 

What slow stitching project(s) have you been working on lately?

 

Happy stitching!

 

I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count.

Hexagon Slow Stitching

I've gotten a bit farther on both of my hexie EPP projects. I stitched the first two star points onto this center for my hexie stars quilt (using 1" hexies):

When I started to work on the fourth star point for my QOV quilt (using 2" hexies), I realized that I hadn't basted all of those hexies yet. So first I basted all the hexies I'll need for this star point, then I started stitching them together. All the outer hexies are stitched to the center, and four of the outer hexies are stitched to each other:

I'm linking up to:

Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching

Life Under Quilts

Sarah Did It - HeLP for Hexie-aholics

 

 

Happy stitching!

Slow Stitching

This week, I finished the 3rd point for my QOV star quilt!

I also got a bit further on my hexie stars quilt:

I thought it would be fun to compare the size of one rosette of the hexie stars (1" hexies) with one rosette of the QOV star (2" hexies). Here's how they look side-by-side:

And finally, I worked a bit more on my embroidery for Winter Wonderland. I've started stitching the large snowman:

 

I'm linking up to:

Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching

Life Under Quilts

 

Happy (slow) stitching!



Design Wall Monday Update

Hello! Yesterday I promised that I would show you some of what I've been working on lately. You may remember, before my "quilting drought," that I started an EPP hexagon quilt with patriotic fabrics. My goal is to make a large star quilt to donate to Quilts of Valor. I have gotten some work done on that since I last wrote about it. The hexagons are 2" per side, so 4" going straight across. The center measures 28" across:

The first two star points are finished, although they are not actually attached to the center yet:

This has become too large of a project to really take anywhere to stitch on, so this summer, I decided to start another EPP hexagon quilt.

I'm using Kaffe Fassett's delicious fabrics, with his "grape" colored shot cotton for the center. I have one little rosette finished. Eventually I plan on making some stars out of these hexies, so for now, I'm calling this "Hexie Stars". For this project, I'm using 1" hexies. Here are some more hexies, basted and ready to go. I basted these while in the car on the way to my in-laws' farm. Basting doesn't require too much precision stitching, so it's a great way to while away the 5-hour trip.

Shelley at Elsie's Girl had a fabulous suggestion: buy a Fiskars hexagon punch (available in the scrapbooking section of your local craft store) and use it to punch out all those magazine subscription inserts. The inserts are a great weight for EPP papers, and much cheaper than buying the papers pre-cut.

 

Besides these, I've started a new leaders/enders project. (If you're not familiar with leader/enders, here's a description by Bonnie Hunter.) I first fell in love with this pixelated heart quilt a few years ago, and kept it in the back of my mind. Then Sharon brought a pixelated heart quilt which she had made to quilt guild, and I knew I needed to make one soon. So I've been cutting out 2.5 inch squares of low volume/neutral fabrics for the background. I have a few sewn together so far:

Hopefully I'll have this done in time for Valentine's Day, but we'll see!

 

I have actually been working on some other things as well, lately, but the laundry is calling, so I'll have to tell you about those on another day.

 

I'm linking up to Judy at Patchwork Times and Jessica at Life Under Quilts.

 

Happy stitching!