Helping Chookyblue celebrate...

I had intended to post last night to report on our sewing weekend linking up with Chookyblue, but decided I would have an early night and do this early this morning. I must have been a tad tired, as I did not see "early" this morning. It is mid morning all ready, but the washing machine is running, and the fire is going, the dishes from the weekend are done, and a menu has been planned for next weekend. I am about to prepare the bedrooms, and do some cleaning, but first I will update you on the weekend activities.

There were 4 of us at various times during the weekend, and I managed to get to some sewing by mid afternoon on Saturday. It felt so good to have some time at the machine, (not Max), and note to self, do it more often.

Val had a bundle of fabrics that her daughter wanted made into a quilt for her spare room. At first there was no plan in mind, but she looked through some magazines and had an idea or two. First up were some 9 patch blocks, and then below you can see Val's progress by the time she left on Sunday afternoon. This will have borders added to it, so look forward to seeing the finish.

Marie has a challenge on her hands, and there was lots of preparation of the fabrics, cutting them and placing into labelled bags. This is a quilt that requires a lot of concentration, as you can see in the second photo. By Sunday afternoon, she had made some progress, and was half way into the first block. I think that when this is done, it will be much quicker sewing the remaining blocks, as she will be able to  follow the completed one. I am looking forward to seeing this finished, as I have one to make too, but in different colours.

I have lots of PHD's to work on, but though I might get back to the hexagons, so that I can finally say they are done. I worked on these at Easter, and the first photo is the table runner I made with them.

I found the notes, which were from a workshop at Quilt Encounter, in 2016, with Heather Ford, using the HexNMore Ruler. I have enjoyed this workshop a lot more than the curved one. The original plan was to make placemats as well, but then I thought I would do a quilt instead, so made some more hexagon blocks. Heather had made a quilt with the blocks, with lots of background and not many hexagon blocks, so I made a plan.

I made a few more blocks, and mixed up the colours. But when I laid them out, I realised that some of them looked more like "windmills" then hexagons?? Not happy about this. So went back to the drawing board, and made some more hexagons. (Maybe I will have placemats after all, with the rejected blocks??)

Laying them out on the bed, and auditioning different options for the background fabric. I did get told that I was being "too fussy" about the colours?? 

A decision has been made, and I cut more hexagons from the background fabric, and started sewing them together. I considered cutting half hexagons so that I could make rows, but decided that I would sew using a whole block, and attempt set in seams. Wish me luck. I have sewn the bottom left hand corner together, and got this far before I called it a day. Now I am looking at this on the bed, and can see a "windmill" in the bottom centre. Am I being too fussy??? Maybe my quilter will fix it?? You can see the paper with my rough plan in the corner. The quilter will have a lot of negative space to quilt won't she??

Hopefully I can find some time soon to get the blocks all sewn together, and hand it to the quilter. And then I can start the one that Marie is working on.

Helen joined us for a while on Saturday, and finished the binding and sleeve on a quilt, but sorry, forgot to record this with a photo.

Now it's time to get busy, and do some work.

Blessings, From Jude