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

Building Code Violation

This probably means I shouldn't try to build my own house to live in, right? I paper pieced the first house but decided to hand piece the next house so that I could get the flower centered in the window. In the past, I've not been very good at making my own templates and its obvious that I'm still not very good at making my own templates. Back to the drawing board!

Anyone know of a good tutorial about making templates?

I'm also still plugging away at making hexagons for my version of Anna Ruggles hexagon quilt. See my previous post for a link to it. These hexagons should be enough to finish the round of rosettes I'm working on. It takes a surprising amount of time to stitch them together, especially using the method I'm trying to keep the stitches from showing. Will share that with you another time.

You may have noticed that I removed the brown background from my blog. I'm still looking for something I like to replace it so things may look different the next time you stop by. Not so sure I like the creamy swirls, just a little too yellow for me. Not that there's anything wrong with yellow, its just not "me". The question is, "What is me?"