Basting Hexies

I got the rest of my hexies basted, with help from a 4-episode Netflix show called Collateral.  It is pretty entertaining, with great performances from the actors, though the mystery relies on a few too many coincidences. 

I knew this box from last year's Christmas cards would come in handy for something.  It is perfect for holding my basted hexies in color order. 

This is not a traditional English Paper Piecing project.  Rather, I am making a wall hanging using the method that Modern Handcraft uses.  You've probably seen photos of her work on the internet; I have some on my Pinterest boards.  So my next step is to figure out what to use as the background fabric.  Modern Handcraft usually uses a solid white background, which is what I initially thought I'd use. 

But I trialed some alternatives from my stash.  I like green better than the white option, though I am thinking of going with a solid rather than tone-on-tone and maybe just a little darker. 

But I like this blue denim option too.  What do you think?

In other news, this little guy joined our household two weeks ago.  His name is Trevor and he is a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, just like Dillie (his half-sister, they have the same dad).  So we are back to being a two-Corgi family, with puppy in training.  Fortunately, Trevor is learning fast and he loves to be cuddled.   

What I Did On My Vacation

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen a photo or two from my trip.  Mr. Main Street and I went on a river cruise on the Danube, from Nuremberg (Germany) to Budapest (Hungary).  It was wonderful and may have spoiled us for other means of travel!  AMAWaterways was the river cruise company for our trip and I can't say enough good things about the experience. 

We flew to Munich and spent two nights there, taking in the major sites and adjusting to the time difference, then went by train to Nuremberg, where the cruise was supposed to start.  But water levels were low in the canal and river, so to avoid running aground, our boat, the AMASonata, was moored east of Nuremberg and the cruise company took us to the boat by bus. 

Nuremberg

We very slowly made our way downriver, stopping each morning in another town where we could have a leisurely tour of the sights and then spend some free time.  All of our meals were on the boat; the food and service were both excellent. 

Passau

Melk Abbey

along the Danube in Austria

Hofburg Palace in Vienna

One day in Vienna was not enough, I'd like to see more, but that gives me a reason to go back!  Budapest was more impressive than I expected, a lot of beautiful buildings along both sides of the river (one side is Buda and the other side is Pest, joined into one city in the 19th century).  It became even more impressive at night when the major buildings are lit up.  

Parliament building in Budapest at night

I took along a hand work project, about a zillion hexies I cut out that need to be basted to the paper.  I only got a few done, had too much else to occupy me, lol.  I met a woman on board who was working on her own epp project, the Lucy Boston quilt.  Pretty surprising considering I almost never encounter another quilter outside of my LQS (or the internet) and there were only 168 passengers on the cruise. 

I'm back to my regular schedule now and a whole lot more basting.  Good thing I have a long list of shows to watch on Netflix.  The weather forecast calls for rain this weekend so I may make some real progress. 

Back, and Quilting Again

Wow, I never intended to be away from the blog so long.  Full time jobs take too much time away from quilting in the first place, then various circumstances at my place of work resulted in me working even more than usual for the past few months.  Weekends have been for catching up on household tasks like laundry.  I was not seeing much of the inside of my sewing room, just catching snatches of quilting inspiration via Instagram and blogs at odd moments or at the end of the day when I lacked the energy for anything else.

But I was sorely missing my creative outlet so over Memorial Day weekend, I got back to a project I started in Oct. 2017 (you can see the start here).  I got my Wildflowers blocks sewn into rows then put the rows together this past weekend. 

The pattern is Wildflowers, by Kim Brackett, and is in her book Scrap Basket Strips and Squares.  My next step is to applique the centers to each flower then I am actually thinking of machine quilting it myself.  Ever since I got the book Walk, by Jacquie Gering, I've been wanting to give machine quilting another try.  I have an idea for a quilting design for this top, plus it is small (so easy to manage) and the busy-ness will make it more forgiving of any hitches in the quilting. 

I promise to be back soon, in less than three months anyway.

Roughly What It Will Look Like

2018 Winter Olympic Games = lots of time for hand sewing in my view.  I got a little project together.  It is called the mandolin quilt block, from Tales of Cloth.  I stumbled across the block on Instagram, where you can see this block (#mandolinquilt) in every color combination and type of fabric you can think of.  It is an English paper piecing design.

The photo below shows my fabric choices, cut and laid out to test the combination.  Actually, this is where I ended up, not where I started, but I neglected to take photos of the false starts.  

I glue-basted during the first night of coverage and have been sewing during figure skating, skiing, and snowboarding.

The design so far; two more rounds to go.  I'm making just one block and my plan is to applique it to background fabric, quilt it, and frame it using a large embroidery or quilting hoop. 

A Pieceful Finish

I have a finish to show off!  I started this quilt in 2016 (you can read about the blocks in this post), sent it off to my longarm quilter, then it sat in my sewing room waiting to be bound.  Well, voila, here is Pieceful:

Pieceful is 78" square, a little larger than Mr. Main Street's wingspan, and my secondary quilt holder, Miss Main Street, moved away to Brooklyn to live the life of a recent college grad and pursue her dream of becoming a comedian.  So I have to make do. 

Pieceful is part of my Fig Tree Harvest series, an effort to finally make quilts from all my hoarded stash of Fig Tree Quilts fabrics.  You can see my collection to date under the Fig Tree Harvest tab at the top of the page or here.  The weird thing is that I've made all these quilts but the basket holding my Fig Tree stash does not seem to get any emptier!  There are still a few more in there. 

Karen Thompson did the quilting using a panto.  I like the quilting design very much.  The dense, wavy lines soften the hard edges of all the small squares and blur the colors together. 

Here's a closer-up of the quilting.

I even used fabric from stash for the backing and binding.  The backing is a large-scale floral tone-on-tone.  It's not Fig Tree and has been in my stash for years, I'm glad I finally found a good application for it.  And the binding is leftover fabric I bought for the centers and outer rings for Globe Trotting, an earlier Fig Tree Harvest quilt.

I have no idea what will be next in the Fig Tree Harvest series.  I have quite a bit of fabric left but it is a mish-mash of colors and designs, lots of small pieces, so will likely have to be something very scrappy.  But that will have to wait; I have other quilting fun planned for the near term.  Stay tuned!

Looking Back at 2017 and Ahead to 2018

I just looked at my first post of 2017, the one in which I wrote about what I planned to make during 2017.  It's a good thing there aren't performance evaluations with hobbies or I would be fired as I accomplished almost none of my plans.  I finished the first project (Flutter), then got side-tracked for sure.

My goals for 2018 are very similar to last year.  I have a quilt to bind and Wildflowers to finish up.  I want to make a Christmas quilt, probably the Fig Tree pattern All Wrapped Up or maybe Daybreak by Jaybird Quilts.  I'd like to make a Christmas pillow or two as gifts.  A lace clutch is still on my list and we could use some new placemats and a new set of pillow shams.  And I need a handwork project to work on during the Winter Olympics.  Then there is the quilt on the cover of the Feb. 2018 edition of American Patchwork & Quilting...I might start with the stars.  And let's be real, new patterns and fabrics will catch my eye!  I gathered some ideas onto a Pinterest board. 

What are you quilting plans for 2018?