Hexalicious!

I'm making these little babies for the Handsome Hexies Swap (Round 2).


They are soo much fun & completely addictive. This round we're making 25 hexies for our secret partner and it's going to be pretty hard to stay within the limit. I have a bunch of fabrics fancy cut and plan to make them all up & then choose the best 25 (or so). I'm also working on a hexie holder using some essex linen and echino.

You may see a little gnome poking his face out at the back there - I got a big generous swatch of this Spoonflower print when I bought a 500gm scrap bag from One Flew Over along with some matching lime Munki Munki, awesome Saffron Craig prints & little bits of Katie Jumps Rope (amongst lots of pieces). As I was basting my little gnome hexie (hoping my partner is a gnome lover, unlike me) I couldn't help noticing his terribly cute pink cheeks and his overall air of mischeviousness & next thing I know... I might, possibly, maybe like gnomes. Heather Ross gnomes, on a hexie. I don't think I'll ever go for a gnome in my garden but I think I can stop warning my swap parterns to "hold the gnomes"!

Rapunzel

Also for my DQS9 quilt. I've settled on a layout for my star and blocks thanks to all the lovely comments from my fellow swapees. I wanted to show all of my blocks but my laptop & I are not friends today so it's just this one. She's my fave though. I think the purple is a little strong for the overall fuchsia & orange colour of the quilt but I'm keeping her in anyway. Have to mix it up a little right? I think Rapunzel might just be my all time Heather Ross character favourite, just pipping Frederick the goldfish bowl fishing kitty at the post. It's not visible in this little scrap but at the bottom of Rapunzel's tower are teeny tiny hairpins.




I've also gotten this perle to do my hand quilting outlines. I had trouble finding the right colours in no. 8 so have gone with no. 5. It's pretty thick but I've bought some needle with suitably large eyes and am hoping for the best.

A scrappy star

for my Doll Quilt Swap quilt.



Still working on the rest of the layout.

Sunday stash, birthday edition.

Stack of loveliness.




Princesses.




Finally, this lovely selvedge.

Sunday stash

Old stash.
Japanese fabrics - the first three are from Kimono House which I visited when I was in Melbourne earlier this year, the bottom one was from Funky Fabrix. I don't have names for any of this stack, I'm sorry.




New stash.
Solids from Blueberry Buckle. Ash, white and some Essex linen/cotton blend in putty. Lovely quality, shame I do not like the colour of the putty now that it's arrived. May be destined for ebay unless it grows on me. On the other hand, I love the ash!


Resizing has added an ugly moire to this photo, click for bigger & prettier.

I think I'm in love

I'd already begun to open my heart to yellow (which I've always hated) & then next came orange (ewww!) but now that I've begun combining them with plums, purples & fuchsia they've swept me off my feet. I think the silver of the Kona ash really makes it for me too.



I'm playing with quilt designs that try to capture the feeling that I get from these photos ~ so far its only working with teeny tiny squares (yikes) which would mean ticker tape or confetti I guess. I have to admit I intended this to be a little model ~ for a block in a box quilt say~ but it may turn out to be to scale. I'm not sure yet whether it would work for a lap sized quilt.



I can't wait to see how the new Heather Ross line Far Far Away 2 goes with these fabrics from her Mendocino and first Far Far Away lines. I have a birthday package winging its way across the sea right now. Some of those fabrics will go into my Doll Quilt Swap quilt, some into a charity quilt which I'll blog about once I get it underway and some will be just for me ~ especially the roses.

Busy like a bee

Today is brought to you by the letter B. First of all, I'm on to Plan B for my Doll Quilt Swap design. After spending a little more time following my partner around (virtually) I think that this suits her better than my original hexie/mendocino plan.



Bad photo but you get the idea, I hope. It's my first swap of any kind and I've found that coming up with a design that suits your partner is easy, it's coming up with something that connects the things you both love despite your diferent tastes that is fun & challenging. Does that make sense to anyone else?

My second B is Bee Seam Piecing Downunder. Yep, jumping into the biggest swap on flickr wasn't enough, I've also joined a really lovely Aust/NZ bee and should be receiving some fabrics in the coming week. It looked touch & go there for a minute with getting enough people but now we're all full up. After most of a year lurking around the online quilting world I feel happy to be coming out of my shell a little & can't wait to get sewing.

Third & final B is batting. I've started whipping up my batting squares for sewtakeahike's Quilt as You Go Quilt Along. There have been some truly gorgous blocks posted at the flickr group and since it will be a while before I can afford to have something long arm quilted this is an excellent way to get a queen size quilt onto my bed.

I'll be doing something a little different for my quilt as you go quilt - the blocks will be courthouse steps/drunk love type rather than scrappy log cabin and they'll all have a 2.5" white outer border which should look like sashing. I love the scrappy look but quilte honestly I just don't have that wide a range of fabrics (despite my dedication to building my stash!) & think I'd just be disappointed with the results. Scrappy will just have to be a future project, instead I'm going with the fabrics below plus a few others.




It's such a grey afternoon, maybe I could squeeze in one more B and run myself a bath...