Thursday, May 31, 2012

Sexy Hexie(s)

It's raining here in Michigan tonight, and I'm home with Maple for the next few days while Jim galavants around North Carolina visiting his buddies.


As the title suggests, I've been making more hexies.  I've been making more hexies out of my dissertation. I'm on my ___th draft and so have about a dozen old drafts and parts of drafts laying around the house so I started salvaging some of the waste and printing on the back of them. It sort of feels good to sew it up and rip it apart when I complete a flower.
Take that focus groups!

Progress!
I've  been working on a Grandmother's Flower Garden for some time--about 2 months now I guess. Since I made the hexie pillow I found a love of making the itty bitty things and decided I had to keep going. The very first quilt I made was all hand-pieced and I loved the process of doing that. I like fast finishes and having pretty quilts around my house, but I also really wanted to make something that would take awhile and allow me to enjoy the fabrics.

The brown and green fabric with red "flowers" are Grandma's fabric
I started looking for 30's prints, but found out how much designer fabric really costs, so I started looking for rip-off reproduction prints. I found some actual 30's prints on sale and many others were from various places--Hobby Lobby, Joann's, Walmart, etc. Some were actually my grandmother's fabrics that I found downstairs after she died. I'm really excited about this quilt and am loving the process and the progress so far.





REALLY love that white with blue ring flower


 The variety of prints I think is going to be really fun and I really can't wait to see it when it's finished. I'm planning on a blue/aqua sort of background.


It's going to be big and take awhile to finish, but I'm totally ok with that.


Monday, May 14, 2012

Le'ts COVER some things

Ok, cheesy title, but it's true.



I made this awhile ago, and as my current trend with blogging seems to go,  I didn't blog about it. Sooo, now I'm remedying that.

I had the idea to document my quilting/sewing/creative adventures online, but also in print. For nostalgia, posterity, so I can look back when I'm old and see the pretties I made. So my future kids and grandkids can look at it after I'm gone to see the pretties I made. So when the internet finally takes over and we're mindless machine-zombies I'll still have hard proof of the pretties I made. And so I can look at my progress, improvement in skill, and have fun.

I used this tutorial from http://smashedpeasandcarrots.blogspot.com/2011/09/fabric-covered-composition-notebook.html. 

It was fairly easy to make and follow the directions, though I did admittedly have some trouble sewing the flaps to the main body of cover, hence no close-ups of that part because it's pretty messy. But that's more to do with my still-learning abilities than the tutorial.

I've written in the journal exactly 3 times with pictures, but the cover really is beautiful and I fully intend to add more soon....

The fabric is Joel Dewberry, from one of the Aviary lines I believe....... The inside polka dot is another Hobby Lobby find I think. Or a remnant from Jo-anns. I've got to start writing stuff down. Another use for the journal! Enjoy.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

I'm Baaaack


Whew, ok. It's been a seriously long time since I've written anything. This time I (sort of) have an excuse.

I flew to Philly about 2 months ago for the exciting  nerve-wracking process of defending my dissertation proposal. I flew in on a Sunday, defended Monday, and flew home. Short, and thankfully, sweet. I passed! I have some revisions to do (which still haven't been done) but I am finally moving on to another step in the PhD. process. Other than that, tons of subbing and some nice weather have kept me away from blogging in awhile.

In the meantime, I've been doing TONS of sewing. Like, lots. I'll hopefully be updating more frequently now as I got my camera to upload to the Mac. yay! So, without further ado, here's one of my projects from the last 3 months.

A simple, hexie pillow. I took these along with me to Philly and stitched away the day in the airport. I cannot believe how much I love this pillow.



 Most of the hexies were random scraps I found at Mel Trotter thrift store or leftover from my fairytale quilt, which I don't have pictures of so I'll remedy that.



 The purple border is Kona Cotton Crocus I think. The green border I forget, and the binding and back were bargain finds at Hobby Lobby. Finished at 16 x 16. My love of hexies was officially born with this pillow. Enjoy!