slow sewing steady progress

25 done, 7 to go...

The flower garden blocks are nearly all complete! All of the fabrics have been chosen and cut, so now it's just a matter of sticking with it. I usually sneak in a bit of hexie sewing time on my Monday morning coffee talks with Thing 2 :)

My quilt guild has been hosting a couple of evening meet ups each month for hand sewers (again at Starbucks) so that provides another opportunity for progress.

The background hexies aren't nearly as exciting as the flowers, but I've got about 40% of those sewn together. I'm using a coloring chart to keep track of the sections; this should make it easier to put the whole thing together when all the components are finished!

I don't have a count of how many background hexies are basted and ready to go, but there is a bag full.  And on a recent evening in a fit of paper-punching madness I punched out 622 foundation paper hexagons. Carpal tunnel, here I come!!

Some of these counts are "best-guess"...

• Center Star Colored Hexagons completed: 151/151 (100%)
• Flower Colored Hexagons completed: 475/608 (78%)
• Grey Background Hexagons completed (guessing): 218/532 (40%)
• Total Hexagons completed: 874/1291 (67.6%)

You can read more about the method I use to English Paper Piece (EPP) these hexagons and see the project pattern in this post.  Previous progress updates can be viewed here.

I'm a little shocked at how diligently I've managed to stick with this project.  I hope my persistence continues!!

my signature color

Whoa - I finished a quilt almost three months ago and forgot to tell you about it!  This is my Triple Star quilt with lots of fuchsia/magenta/pink so I'm calling it "My Signature Color".

During 2014 I was a member of an online bee group - Modern Instabee Hive 15 - that used quilt patterns from the book Modern Bee: 13 Quilts to Make with Friends by Lindsay Conner.  November was my month for the 11 other members to make blocks for me, and I asked them to use a variety of low volume fabrics for the background and loads of darker pinks for the 16" Triple Star block.  Using these fabrics from my stash (minus the turquoise prints) I made a couple of example/inspiration blocks.

During the months November 2015 - February 2015 Triple Star blocks from all over the continental US and Canada arrived!

The book pattern called for finishing the quilt with plain 2" sashing between the blocks and a couple of borders around the 3x4 block grid, but I changed it to include 4" sashing with additional stars as the cornerstones and no borders. Because I'm contrary like that. And because you can never have too many stars.  A sprinkling of turquoise cornerstone stars breaks up all of the pink.

The quilting was done by Carol Linder in Hampshire, and I chose the "Cracker Jacks" pattern with fuchsia thread - naturally!  The leftover black and white floral backing from this quilt made a fun (and free!) binding.

For the backing I used Wide Back Text in white from Windham Fabrics.

ALL the color names on the back of this quilt!

Many, many thanks to the members of Modern Instabee Hive 15! This is one of my all time favorite quilts, and what a great experience it was to work with all of you!

** I've been busy with some secret Santa sewing the past few weeks that I won't be able to share until January. But Carol currently has my Red Hot Dreamy Hexagons quilt top in her queue, and I've been diligently working on my Flower Garden Quilt. So there are still projects for me to share with you in the few remaining weeks of 2015 :) **