Week 2 of One Hour of Simply Needle & Thread

I accidentally uploaded these pictures in reverse order and instead of starting over, I'll just explain my progress but sdrawkcab!

While I was preshrinking backing fabric for my Jubilee+5 Garden quilt, I needed another hand work project and remembered this Ann Ruggles hexagon quilt I'm trying to reproduce. This is a project that I purposefully began to have something small to work on in waiting rooms. I'm not making speedy progress and that's actually good because it means I haven't been spending a lot of time at appointments lately! At the right in the photo, you can see what it might become someday.
Here are some of my hexagon flowers waiting to have more hexagons stitched around them. I'm using 1/2 inch hexagon papers to English Paper Piece. Remember the 1/2 inch is the measurement of each side. Just for fun, I also have 1/4 inch hexagon papers but those are just to look at! Very tiny. The fabrics I'm using are all Jo Morton or are associated with her.

Here's my calendar showing my stitching time for last week. I had a fairly busy week and thought I was doing well to get 8 hours of hand work in but after I'd written Saturday's time down, I did another 2 hours of stitching bringing my total to 10 hours for the week.

This past week I finished hand piecing the quilt top, pin basted the quilt sandwich together and started big stitch quilting it. I think the backing I chose will work well with either the gray/polka dot or pink fabric for binding. At least, those are my two binding choices now.

And here it is - my big stitch quilting progress - eight blocks. I always thought big stitch quilting was a relatively quick way to quilt. I've decided it might be for someone else but not for me. I see my stitches get wobbly and crooked which seems so much more noticeable since the stitches are larger and yes, orangy red. So, I pick them out and do them over. That, plus, my fingers are sore because its been three months since I did any hand quilting. Its not speedy progress, for sure. I'm wondering what color to quilt the gray/polka dot sqaures - cream or gray?

Hey, see that block to the right of the sunflowers? The one with the orange center, yellow petals and blue background. Looks like a dandelion puff to me getting ready to blow away in the wind. Interestingly (to me anyway), even with the drought we have a few dandelions growing in our front yard.

Until next time, Mayleen