Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Updates

I have been making slow but steady progress on this project.  This part is still in about 5 different sections then I need to sort out the process of making extra hexis from fabric that looks similar enough that it doesn't appear that I didn't plan this out well years ago when I started.


Progress has been stalled by an unplanned road trip to California.  Down via Nevada.

Back through Oregon.

About 1200 miles (1930 km) in 4 days in terrible weather to spend 20 minutes to say goodbye to a family member who passed away 6 days later.

Totally worth it.

Doing a food Gut Biome food challenge which has helped the hubby with the GI problems.  Details on my Nutrition Blog.  

And it was time to replace the tires on my bike.  Which resulted in a 166 mile (267 km) lunch ride Sunday.

The wind was blowing like mad but it was warm and sunny.  While I was exhausted at the end, surprisingly, that cured the lingering back pain I'd had for the past month,.  Apparently, it's a better "core" workout than the stretching and yoga I'd been doing.

And I'm trying to learn some Ukranian for a possible vacation to visit a good friend.  I might need to learn Romanian too.  There are lots of Romanian quilters....

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Hexi WIP

Time to pull another WIP out of the pile.  Once I pulled it out, I remembered why I had stalled out.

It's at the point that involves spreading it out in order to figure out the pattern for putting it together.

After a couple days it's starting to shape up.  This view is actually 4 panels waiting to be combined as well as a dozen strips.

I think that another reason it was abandoned is that the original sketch I made notes that I need 1054 hexies, it is only about 44" square.  This will mean either another 1000 hexies or some rather large borders to make this anything a useful size.

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Ojibwe Finished

This quilt was originally designed as a wedding quilt in 2005 inspired by Ojibwe bead work, but done in the favorite colors of the bride to be. I had spent quite a bit of time in New England and the museums of Washington DC that year admiring and taking photos of Native American beadwork. 

There are several reasons this got set aside.  
1) I got bored making 4 repeats of the same designs
2) I wished that I had done this in more traditional beadwork colors (lots of blue and on a white background).
3) She didn't get married
4) I didn't want to give it away anyway.
5) When I pulled it out to work on years later, I hated the green fabric that I'd used for the leaves.
6) I kept changing my mind about the quilting
7) I swore I would never FMQ a black quilt ever again. 


In the end, I have mixed feelings about the flowers I added in red.  I am very fond of the red/yellow ones in the center.  But the green thread blended into the background too much so the others seem to randomly float. 

I did all the gridwork and outer lines without a ruler.  Even though I drew those lines on, I have trouble driving that machine consistently in a straight line. 

Some is reasonably straight.


Others very much not. 

I considered re-stitching these sections.  But I was reminded of another quilting "disaster" when a friend reminded me "It's art, it adds to the charm."


One more that I'll be able to submit for the Finish-A-Long.

My original goal list post