It's been a GREAT day!!

The design wall is empty today!!  My version of Katja Marek's Homage to Grandmother's Flower Garden is completed -- well, the top is finished!!  

I've spent part of everyday since New Year's Day assembling the subsections into bigger sections until there were two diagonal halves.  All that was left to stitch were dozens of 3/4" seams -- stitch one, stitch a "sew-off", stitch another, and so on.

My goal was to finish the piecing by the time I leave for a retreat in a week where I started this project last winter.  Managing my neck arthritis is challenging.  It dictates how long I can sit at my sewing  machine, so I'm trying to develop a new habit of stopping before my neck starts to hurt.

The "set-in piecing simplified" technique I use to machine piece hexagons needs a "sew-off" at the end of every seam, so I've been going through dozens of them this week.  

On New Year's Eve day (itchy to start a new project), I sorted through my 2 1/2" strip stash and cut everything for a scrappy strip quilt that has been on my "want to piece" list for a while.  It is a take-off of a jelly roll quilt -- Sakura Sun (by Linda Fitch for RJR Fabrics).  Stitching the pieces into the bands was my first set of sew-offs.

Bonus -- getting up and down to press the bands as they were finished is a good mini-break from the machine and my neck appreciated that!!

165 sew-offs later and the bands were ready to put on the design wall -- well, that's exciting!!  

I spent an hour moving the bands around a bit to control some "hot-spots" --

like this hot pink/orange/red piece on the left that was screaming at me from the other side of the room.

Quick tip here -- I switched it with another more subtle "warm color" piece and settled it up against another red/orange piece to calm it down.

Much better!!

Of course, once the layout felt right I had to sew the bands together and finish the top immediately!?!

I added three more bands than the pattern specified to achieve a "tall" laprobe size. 

Time to hunt for some more sew-offs and get back to work on Homage!

It has been my habit for over a decade to use UFO's that have stalled out at the piecing stage as "sew-offs" -- two birds, one stone.  This piece surfaced sometime in November while I was hunting for something else so I laid out what was pieced on the floor and have been stepping over it for two months.  

No cutting needed as I had done that whenever I started it.

Sew-offs!!

And more set-in piecing -- so I was on a roll!

I see-sawed back and forth between the two projects 

adding the honeycombs to the layout.  I cut a few more of the hexa-poly shapes to finish the outer edges and . . . . . 

. . . . . then there it was, the very last 3/4" seam of Homage!!

And here it is in all it's glory!

All the fabric is from my stash.

Rotary cut with the little hexagon in Marti Michell's template Set N.***

It is completely machine pieced using the "set-in piecing simplified" technique that I taught.

The top is about 64" wide by 60" long and I won't add a border.

The backing is ready and I'll take it to the retreat next week to layer it (and show off)!

I even have ideas in mind for how I'll quilt it by machine!?!

My wheels will spin for a day or two now while I refocus and pick up the next project.

That's where all my lists come in handy -- minimizes the wheel spinning!

Keep stitching out there!!

Mary

***EDIT April 2025

Marti Michel closed her business in late in 2024 and while some shops may still have a stock of her templates, you can also find them on Ebay and Etsy. 

 

A Philosophical Moment

During the first spring of the pandemic, I found a sprouted peach pit in the compost.  I planted it in a pot and it grew!!  It survived the first winter of the pandemic and in the second spring, I moved it into a bigger pot  and set it into a sunny spot.  It grew to about 3 feet tall.  This year, as the winter began to shift into spring, I fussed about whether the sapling had survived -- the leaf buds looked so tight and brown.

Happily, the leaf buds began to open about a week ago and then yesterday to my great surprise and delight, a single sweet pink blossom opened.

This morning as I thought about that single little flower which seems a bit premature for the age of the tree, I was struck by an inspiration -- the peach tree, young as it is, is doing what it was destined to do.  

It's blooming!

It reminded me to start the day with what inspires me and off to the studio I went for a pleasant morning of catch-up piecing on my version of Katja Marek's Homage to Grandmothers Flower Garden.   I am working on "week 17" which is about a third of the way along. A couple weeks ago, I finally "organized" the background hexagons in a small tray to eliminate the messy pile I've been pulling from since the beginning.  It's made it easier to keep the randomness going as I piece and knowing when to cut more of a certain fabric.

I'm using 3/4" hexagons and estimate it will be about a 60" square piece in the end so it could be a wallhanging or laprobe when finished.  I'm enjoying the process very much!

It's sharing the design wall with a little upgrade of an old teaching sample.  The four "nosegay" blocks were made using Marti Michell's Stripper Set with her Kite Ruler tool*** -- it was one of my favorite workshops to teach and I have nosegay blocks in a variety of sizes.  Since it's only 30" square, I am adding the little flower blocks across the top and bottom to make it rectangular.  The next step will be to add sashing between the little blocks and around the entire piece.  There will need to be another border or two -- I'm thinking some arrangement of diamonds to repeat that shape.

Stay tuned!

I've conceded the month of April won't having any projects finished since George is sharing his table with the tuberous begonias who will soon move out onto the porches but I did eliminate a project from the piles by cancelling it so I'm down one more project -- maybe I'll eliminate another to make up for the lack of finishes this month???

Many of you garden and experience the spring/summer slow down with stitching especially in temperate areas with big seasonal weather swings.  I struggle with trying to do too many things at the same time so embracing the garden feels like neglecting the stitching.

But each of these activities nourishes and sustains one, so I need to remember that . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . growing plants and practicing my piecing skills are signs of hope for me.  I plant a seed hoping for yummy tomatoes and fresh beans and bouquets of zinnias.  I plant little tree and shrub seedlings hoping for shade and fragrance and fruit to attract nature to my garden.  I practice my piecing and quilting skills hoping to continue making lovely quilts.

The peach blossom reminds me!

Mary

***EDIT April 2025

Marti Michel closed her business in late in 2024 and while some shops may still have a stock of her templates, you can also find them on Ebay and Etsy. 

 

What's On Your "To-Do" List?

 Greetings from a sunny ( and balmy) snowy Northeast Ohio!!  

It's 37 degrees F. and after the cold days last week, it feels quite nice.  I might not even wear gloves outside today?!?  Yes, all those comedy routines and jokes about us apply when the winter sun is shining and it gets up to freezing!  We are on the downhill side of winter and the year round resident birds like cardinals and tufted titmice have started territorial singing as the daylight increases.  Hearing them cheers me right up and is a signal to my brain that spring is coming!!

How many new projects have you started this year so far?

I found one!!  It's Katja Marek's Homage to Grandmother's Flower Garden.  Have you seen it?  It's a stunning layout!  The pace is doable since the quilt is broken into 52 weekly sections.  I'm using 3/4" finished hexagons because it's larger than I want with the 1" that she has used.  And since I already have an EPP project going, I'm machine piecing this one using the Set-In Piecing Simplified chain piecing technique.  

To satisfy my "fussy cutting" itch (without starting yet another project), I chose this gorgeous floral from my stash to use for the center round of the large flowers.  It also has determined the color palette of rosy pink, golden yellow, and cornflower blue for the entire quilt.

Katja has designed the quilt with an interesting background but since I'm a devoted stash buster at this point, I'm working with a blended scrappy assortment of the palest blues I can find on the shelves.  To keep my momentum going down the road, I've precut lots of these blue hexagons so I can dive into each section without much effort.

My fussy cutting is rather casual but it still scratches my itch.

The trickiest part is inserting the leaves but after some fiddling with different approaches,  setting each one up as a unit like this seems to work best for me.  Sometimes that will mean pinning those pieces to the body of the top until an adjacent section is added but sewing the two background hexagons to the "weird" pieces and then to the leaf section with the final seam being between the two "weird" sections works well.  The "weird" shape is called "Marge's star" as it was introduced by the Aussie designer, Marge Sampson-George.

Isn't it delightful so far?!?

While I'm stuck on the next quilting step for that quilt I showed you in my last post, I've been moving some old UFO's forward.  If you ever attended one of my UFO Assault Lectures, you might recognize this little pineapple piece -- I finally took off the foundation papers and found this cute print in my stash for a wide border to bring it up to a usable size.

This old teaching step-sample is all stitched together and I'm auditioning borders today -- the pieced green border is settled but I'm waffling about a narrow accent border -- argh!!

It's all laid out on the floor just inside the sewing room and so hopefully, when I go back up there later today, one of the five choices I laid out will sing right out!

And I'll have another top to quilt!!

I'm excited to have all the units for parts 4 and 5 ready to add to my version of Jemina's Creative Quilting current mystery sew along!  I've become a regular Zoom webinar attendee for native plants and insect programs -- it's a great time to baste hexies, too!

So it might seem like all I'm doing is stitching?

That about sums it up -- mostly all I'm doing is stitching.  But I think I've stumbled onto a more upbeat strategy for not feeling guilty about it.  For some (inspired?) reason, I didn't make a "to-do" list last week?!?   Instead, I did "got-it-done" lists at the end of each day.  Everyday there were two or three household chores done plus the stitching and no guilt.  It amounted to the same amount of daily housework and sewing as usual, but not having the "to-do" list guilt was great!! Soooo, the "to-do" list will only have notations for tasks I might forget and very few deadlines.  

Up with the "got-it-done" lists because accomplishments build positive momentum!!

And that's a good thing!

Have a guilt-free week!!

Mary