Selfish Sewing?!?

Over the past year or so, I've developed a blogger friendship with Australian quilt maker, Carla at Granny Maud's Girl.  Carla and I met during the 2015 Stash Bee and made blocks for one another.  For 2016, Carla decided to focus on a bit of "selfish sewing" and is doing a monthly feature, "Bee, Myself, and I" to share her selfish success -- you can read about it HERE.

Since most of my stitching this year has been focused on "goals" -- some for the 2016 Finish Along and some for the APQ 2016 Resolution challenge, I like the sound of Carla's idea!  So my selfish sewing this month has been to do something I really want to do with NO deadline!! 

And here it is!

I've been sitting on my hands about starting this project ever since I first saw it on Brigitte Giblin's website.  It's the Nundle Dilly-Bag (see it in glorious color HERE).  It's English paper pieced which I find relaxing and a good size bag at 22" across and 16" tall.  The hexagons are 1 1/2" so it will be a quick project.

My color inspiration came about while working through the blue shelves in my stash -- weeding out pieces, sorting what I keep back into stacks by value (light, medium, dark), and generally tidying the shelves up.  This morning glory print from Hoffman Fabrics surfaced with a bit of nostalgia about the old days when I owned a quilt shop.  As you can see, it's a subtle print -- the leaves are more gray than green and the ivory background keeps the contrast of the print soft. 

As I folded and sorted, I set aside any blue that looked good with the morning glories -- the darks were the most difficult to select since they look harsh but they might be needed so I pulled a few. 

I pulled some prints that will be interesting to fussy cut. 

And this "stripe" has possibilities suggested by Karen at Faeries and Fibres in recent post about using stripes in hexagons HERE.

This print is a charmer and there is a big hunk -- good addition -- lining perhaps? 

I want a bit of another color that will maintain the soft look -- I considered grays and greens -- greens won.  

This is one of my favorite prints from King's Road Imports back in the 90's -- I hope I can work it into my piece!  I hoarded a good size hunk of every color way they printed.

So here is the beginning of the base of the bag.  Not so sure about the dark hexies at this point, but the easiest way to be sure is to try.  You know that a basted hexie will never go to waste even if it doesn't make the cut!! 

I'm looking forward to hearing what Carla and her other friends have been up to for their selfish sewing during the month of March!!

To see what the other quilters have been doing for their "selfish" sewing, go HERE.

I hope your weekend has all the stitching time you want!

Mary Huey

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