Mini-Dresden and Temperature Quilt Update

 Thanks to previous blog records, I can say with certainty that I've been working on this project now for two years.  Almost exactly two years.  Started it in April 2018.

I decided to count the finished plates.  There are 185 plates in total.  I hadn't counted them before.  I'm not sure I should have counted them.....

Only 30 are appliqued.  OK, actually 29.25.

The truth is that I don't do a lot of sit and stitch lately, so I'm trying to be more deliberate about working on them when I am sitting in front of TV.

Last week when I was trying to organize projects and do some cleaning up, I went ahead and cut (all?) the background squares.  Applique on!

Hopefully our trip to Florida will happen - lots of car stitching time.
Hopefully.......

Some helpers getting a photo of the Temperature Quilt.  It was too windy, otherwise.  Here I am showing through April 13.  I've switched to a green background for Spring.  I believe it is Kona "Pear"  At the top you can see one day with yellow/orange.  That was our outlier of 79 degrees!

The 10 year Hexie Project - Major Update

The first mention of the hexies I could find on the blog was *here* in May 2012

I have been carting these babies all over the place.  To many states, in trains, planes and automobiles.  Swim lessons, violin lessons, piano lessons, cello lessons, ballet class and many sporting events.

They are now all together.  Still basted to papers.  Ready for some kind of a border.  Perhaps a thin strip of yellow and a large of blue?

I even know how I'll quilt it.  

More to come.

Hexie Update 4.8.16

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know I've been steadily working on basting and piecing hexagons, epp style.  I call it my 10 Year Project.  Today I am going to do a complete update on how things are going.

 This box contains the 1,672 hexies that I pieced into Eights by last April.  Then I found out I needed to make more, because about 400 of the hexies I had finished were the wrong size.  I pieced them into this small quilt *here*.

 Monday, I finished piecing the hexies into fours.

 This is sort of a magic moment, when you piece Fours into Eights, it takes exactly the same time as Twos into Fours. 

 But you have less pieces, so are done twice as fast!
I did a quick count and have 121 Fours ready to piece.  I will probably only do the 100 - then do Sixteens, then check my layout.

 Once these are all into Eights, I will piece into Sixteens, along the sawtooth edge this time.  Also, when the Eights are done, all will be caught up.

 I've kept out a small handful of Ones, Twos, in case I need to add them somewhere for the layout. 

In other news, the bees come tomorrow.  Today it is snowing.  Not cool.

Schnitzel and Boo Mini Swap Finish

 I signed up for three swaps this year.  They are all complete, now. My last one went out this week, and it is the first one I'm going to share.

I made this dresden plate mini for the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap.

First I bought a charm pack of reproduction fabrics and picked out 10.  2 blades per color.

You may notice that I had to change up one of the fabrics after I put the blades together.  I happened to lay them against the turquoise and it just popped!  I knew where I was going after that.

(blurry picture, sorry) I then came across a pattern in Missouri Star Block Magazine that had the added triangles to make a sunburst with the dresden blades.  Brilliant.

 I made a second plate of white blades to put behind the colors.

 Making sure the white strip was what I wanted on the border.

 Hand quilting with 6 strands of floss around the edges.  I had to use pliers for the center.  Up to 8 layers of fabric in some places, plus batting!

 I used an extra white blade for the label on the back.

 As a bonus I made this little EPP mug rug, too.

 Now I'm dreaming of other dresden projects. They are super fun to make.

Linking with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Friday.

Hexie Baby Finished

 It has just been ages since I've managed to sit down and write a blog post.  I tried to see if I could do them from my phone, but I couldn't find an app that would let me add pictures, and what's a blog without pictures? 
The good news is that I am forcing myself to sit and write this one because I have a finish!  Hurrah!

 Hexie Baby is all done.  Completely hand pieced with the English Paper Piecing method, then machine quilted and finished with a faced binding.

 Our swing is slowly sinking into the ground, and no one dares sit on it, but its great for pictures.  And cat scratching.

 The back, where you can see the really great quilting texture, and my faced binding.  I am so pleased with how it turned out.  It was really a test run for when the 10 Year EPP project is ready to be finished.

 It is not truly a charm quilt, in that there are some repeat fabrics, but there are certainly a lot of fabrics.  From the 80's to the present. 

 There are approximately 400 1 inch hexagons that make up this quilt.  It isn't really very large.  Not even sure if it qualifies as a baby quilt.

 The Precious Moments backing fabric came from my stash that I inherited from my Mom.

 The facing is from a baby quilt from a couple of years ago.

 The Details:
Fabric: Yes. Scrappy.
Batting: Pellon Thin Cotton
Backing: Precious Moments Novelty
Thread: Aurifil #2026
Size: 29" x 34"
I have a super epic WIP list right now, so I'll try to get that written up soon, too.
TTFN

Let's Talk Hexies

A real life friend was chastising me for not blogging lately.  I guess its been nearly 4 weeks.  Yikes.
So let's talk hexies today.  I finished sewing all the hexagons into groups of eight.  And then I did a total count.

 Those cards separate groups of 20.

 Total?  1,672.  What happened to the other 431?

 Well, 408 are in the above quilt.  If you've been around for a while, you may remember that I had cut out a large chunk of papers that were the wrong size.  Off by about 1/8" of an inch.  When English Paper Piecing, that might as well be a mile.  So I pieced all those larger hexies into the above quilt.  It is on the "quilt sooner than later" list. :)  In a way its good, though, because it will give me a chance to try a faced binding to preserve the hexie edges. 

 There are also a few random ones floating around of both sizes. 

The moral of today's story?  I'm back to basting hexies.  I will pull the scrap box in a while.  I have some other hand projects that I want to work on first.  This is, after all, The Ten Year Project.  I've got Five years left!