Weekend Wrap Up

I spent most of this weekend getting ready for my surgical vacation tomorrow.  I got the house clean-ish and the laundry done.  I moved my sewing room to the kitchen since I won't be able to do stairs for a while.  I'll be sewing on my Featherweight.  I figure there will be lots of sewing and napping for a few days anyway.  Maybe I can get caught up on a couple of my BOMs!

I did get in a bit of hand sewing in.  I got my first Lucy Boston block done:

I'm using paper pieces ... as you can probably tell from all the threads!  I plan on making them out of scraps from other projects.  I'll need to decide on a background and highlight fabric though.  I think I'll wait until I get a few made to select something.

We made an impromptu trip to take my Mom to lunch for Mother's Day yesterday.  I managed to get the binding sewn on one of my little quilts on the trip there and back.

Here's Nala modeling:

 And here's the un-modeled quilt:

This is from Tara Lynn Darr's Book "Simply Charming" and the quilt is called Hopscotch. I need to buy some quilt hangers.  I wonder why they are so expensive though every time I buy them.  I think I need to assign my husband a task of duplicating those little buggers!

Easy Street Part 1

Amazingly, today I finished all 192 4-patches!!  Go me!!  Below I'm chaining away .... it seemed endless at the time.  But it went by pretty fast.  I see in the picture my ironing mat is getting pretty nasty looking.  I guess I'll need to cover that with some fresh muslin.

Chain Piecing

My finger got a little sore swirling the centers.  I guess I press too hard.  But it is amazing how fast things go when you get organized and do things consistently.  I think I only fed one or two through the machine the  wrong way and it made swirling much, much easier.

But here's the final results:

192 4-Patches

I hope I am able to keep up!!  I'm anxious for Part 2 so I can get cutting!! 

And since I was on a roll, I put the binding on a couple of quilts.  One that I plan to give as a Christmas present this year, but here's a peak:

Not much given away in that picture!!  Now I'm sitting with my puppy dogs, updating my blog and doing a little stitching on the Hexies.  Tomorrow ... back to work.  

Mercedes, Harley, and Toby

Home Front Hexies

Updated on 11/26/12:  You can check out everyone's progress this week on Easy Street by clicking here:  Easy Street Monday Link-Up 1! 

Home Front Hexies

After seeing Bonnie Hunter's hexie quilt that she calls "Lady in Waiting" in person, I was anxious to try English Paper piecing myself. Here's a link to the work in progress on her website: Lady in Waiting. Pictures do not do that quilt justice and I had the good fortune of seeing the finished top.  That is a BUNCH of hexies!!

 I decided I would do 1" hexies and ordered a set of 2.5" strips of the fabric line Home Front from Connecting Threads to use for my new project.  It came last week and on Friday, I quickly cut some of the strips up in to 2.5" squares.  It's bright colors so I went with a solid black to use for a background.

So far I'm addicted to making these little things! I even took them with me today to quilt class to sew a few before we got started!

I can't wait to sew some together into rosettes!!