Handwork Holiday

I will be taking a vacation in July, with plans to do hand work while I travel.  I've decided to commit to not using my sewing machine for the whole month of July.

That means packing up some partially finished projects.  Tereece Beesley fans, you are excused until Aug 1.  The bottom right background sections are mostly pieced now.  Having put together 100+ unique pieces for the cartoons, I'm looking forward to how fast the popsicles themselves should go.

And Monet needs a little break so I can get excited about it again.

But I finally get to start on the hexies...which will look a little like this.  This quilt is for my sister-in-law Rita.  I have over 1050 hexes cut out with 126 glue basted and ready to stitch.

Any leftovers will be rolled into a scrapier hex quilt for my niece Hillary.  Hers will be lighter pinks and greens that have a more yellow undertone.  I did discover that one of the fuschia fabrics had a streak of a rather brown shade of burgundy.  Looks like I'll be hosting a hex scrap give-away later in the summer for those blocks.

I have also been working drafting 6" blocks for the USA quilt.  Since I don't have the EQ software, I'm relying on my Power Point graphics skills.  I figured out how to save them as a PDF...next step...figuring out how to load a document onto the blog.   I am planning to sew this quilt by hand, so I could get started this month...but I'm nervous about reds bleeding so I will pre-wash the fabrics in batches before I start.

Update:  I discovered a way to upload PDFs to Scribd.com and add the links through Blogger.  I added the first 8 blocks that I drafted on the side bar.   No particular logic to the order...though I did start with 9 patch blocks figuring they would be easiest.  I will be hand stitching these, with the more detailed ones using English piecing.  I'll post pictures & tutorials when I get started on them.