Lovely Hexie Weekend

It was a long holiday weekend here in the USA -- Memorial Day and happily it coincided with the best stretch of pleasant weather we've had since last fall!!  When I wasn't weeding or planting, I was plopped here with a box of EPP hexies! 

The view is quite pleasant and there is just the perfect amount of shade.

And this weekend, the air was filled with the perfume of this very old fringe tree -- if I could keep one plant in bloom year round in my garden, this would be it!!

A week ago, I finished the last motif from Karen H's Value Proposition series that she led over at Faeries and Fibres  (www.faeriesandfibres.blogspot.com -- check out the Quilt Alongs tab) last year. They are 1" hexies and I'm doing EPP to assemble them.  It's very relaxing.

Now I have to add the background hexies around 5 or so and then the path hexies around 3 sides of most of the motifs.  I've organized the layout and numbered all the motifs so I don't have to figure that out again.

As is so often the case with me, I thought I had an inspiration about changing to a slightly darker background color for the fill-in hexies around the outside edges.   Not sure yet, ivory or the pinkish beige (which looks perfect with the fabric I'm using for the path).

But look at this beauty I found while searching for the extra background fabric -- it's the perfect border!!  Colors, style, everything!!  Wahoo!! 

But that wasn't the only hexie-piecing going on here!!  I have another big traditional reproduction hexie quilt going, but I'm doing it by machine using the chain-piecing technique I teach.  It's been hogging the workwall in my studio for a couple months.  It's time for it to move along and so I'm adding dozens of ivory background hexies and merging the units together.  I only have 21 hexies to stitch in place!!

The two missing segments along the lower edge spent the afternoon at the machine with me. If I work on two of them at a time, the chain-piecing rhythm works perfectly!  I was wondering how many 1" seams I've stitched on this piece but I'll leave that for a more focused person to figure out.  I'm using Marti Michell's new 1" Hexagon Set which is three templates from Set G -- a hexagon, diamond, and equilateral triangle.

In the DVD, Set-In Piecing Simplified, I suggest learning the technique by piecing a tumbling block quilt but you can start with any y-seam design.  I don't suggest learning the technique on 1" hexies -- 2" would be a better place to begin, but once you're comfortable with the process, any size is manageable.

 I leave the pressing go since it seems easier to keep the adjacent seams out of the way when doing a y-seam.  So I spent some time beginning at the center of the big star motif and pressing, pressing, pressing.  This is going to be time-consuming!!  I'll work my way out to the final row of the star and then using that as a starting point as I add the other motifs.  Won't the back look nice when it's all pressed -- so symmetrical?!?

As I flip the calendar to the coming week, I'm happy to see very little on my schedule -- more time for hexies!! 

 

As I flip back through to edit this evening's essay, I realize that every fabric I used in both of these projects came from my stash -- I have an awesome stash!!

 

Hope your week is off to a good beginning!!

 

Mary Huey