A Little Catching Up

It’s the last Friday of the month, which means I can share the block I made for my Facebook handquilting group’s BOM.  This month’s theme was hexies … well, you all know that I do love hexies.  I was tempted, for a moment, to use the last Martha Washington’s Flower Garden block I’m working on, but I realized that would defeat the whole point.  The purpose of the BOM is to grow and even experiment as quilters.  Not to mention that I’m hoping to be able to turn my monthly blocks into a sampler at some point.  I spent some time trying to figure out how to incorporate a hexie block into that future sampler … and decided that I’d applique the block onto a piece of the background fabric.  I was a little apprehensive about that since other than a class sampler which didn’t turn out very well, I’ve never done any applique.  Now that I’ve finished the block, I realized that this little flower was probably a pretty good choice for a first applique since the basting kept the seam allowances turned under so I didn’t have to worry about how to turn under the edges or have to fuss with waxed paper and/or starch.  Like I said, this was my first “real” applique,and I’m not displeased with how it turned out. 
I still need to trim the block down (I chose to cut it larger than I needed to have a little margin for error) and to trim the excess fabric from behind the little flower.  I used 1” hexies for this … I would have really rather used smaller hexies, but by the time I decided what I was going to do, I ran out of time to order smaller hexies from Paper Pieces.

Yesterday I got to have some one-on-one time with T#4.  The rest of her family went to Six Flags with friends … she’s just too little to have a good time there, although she sure wanted to go with.  Nana tried to make her day a pretty special one, and I think I succeeded.  We visited Pottery Hollow … she chose a fish, and I chose a little box.  She wanted to have lunch at McDonald’s … not so much for the meal (although she was excited about getting a Happy Meal) but for their indoor playground.  When we got home, we baked a small batch of brownies and played. 

Remember my frustration over realizing that I didn’t have enough red hexies for connectors for my Martha Washington’s Flower Garden?  I was *sure* that I had more but I couldn’t find them, so I could only assume that I didn’t have enough.  Well, guess what?  I was searching for the fabric and unfinished blocks for the Pat Speth project I started at our guild retreat last month (I need to purchase fabric to finish that project – setting triangles, sashing, borders – so I wanted to take some of the fabric and blocks with me to Homestead Hearth to audition suitable fabrics) … and found more hexies!    I need to count them to see if I have enough … I’ll be surprised because I didn’t even have half of what I needed and it doesn’t seem like there are that many more … but I’m going to cross my fingers and hope for enough. 

Speaking of Homestead Hearth, we’ll be making the trek there as soon as DH gets home from breakfast out with our neighbor.  Of course, going to Homestead Hearth means that I will not get back to my Kiss quilt until Monday (All-Star swim championships tomorrow and T#3’s birthday party on Sunday) … but I will be able to get in some stitching on my EPP bow ties, so I won’t be going through total needle-and-thread withdrawal over the next couple of days. 

I hope that whatever you have planned for today includes a little something that brings you joy ... have a great day!
Kathy