C’est fini ! Hexagon QAYG

 I stitched on this until about 10:40 last night and got it finished! The Hexagon QAYG 2021 quilt is officially finished!

I started this January 2021 and was working on making one per day last year. I added a few more to even it out to the size I wanted. Each piece was hand cut, hand pieced and hand quilted and then hand stitched together. 384 hexagons. Size is 68x88. See my tab above for the video that got me started on this project. It was a wonderful scrap buster for using up those cut offs from batting. I used warm and natural batting in all of the hexagons. It has the same feel and weight as a quilt with warm and natural batting. The cats have insisted that it is indeed perfectly snuggly.

The front.

The back.

Linking to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge Saturday and the Slow Sunday Stitchers on Sunday.

Sew close to a finish!

 

Both halves are currently being hand stitched together. I got the bottom section started last night and stitched up until I would have had to move Peanut... who was all comfy snuggled up in the bottom parts on the end of the recliner. I figure 3-4 episodes of Murdock Mysteries should have it finished up. 

On the audiobook front - a few things I have finished up recently.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah - really good and I did not expect the ending part! Covers a lady and family from the early 1920's through the depression and the dust bowl of Texas. It was a 15 hour audio and well worth the hours.

Sofie Kelly series - A Case of Cat and Mouse was #12. This is a nice easy mystery read with cats set in a small town. I am sad I only have one more to go in this series. Curiosity Thrilled the Cat Book is the first in the series. I get mine through the free Libby App and attached my library card to it.

On The Way to the Wedding - Julia Quinn. If you like Bridgerton on Netflix, this book is the youngest son's story. There is one for each of the 8 siblings and the Mom and Dad. I believe I have listened or read them all. 

The Maid by Nita Prose - This was also a good one from the prospective of a potentially Autistic person. Well written and a different prospective from what we normally read about.

I just started a new author to me - Donna Andrews - Murder with Peacocks. I'll let you know how it is.

Lets see... the family expects food for dinner..... so far this week we have had...

Monday- Corned Beef and cabbage in the crock pot (ok, I popped the frozen corned beef into the pressure cooker around lunchtime then threw it back in the crock pot. Then I did the cabbage in the pressure cooker cause I love it that way and threw that into the crock pot. The leftovers have been my breakfast with an egg and irish soda bread. Yum)

Tuesday - roasted veggies and italian sweet sausage over penne pasta. This one is Emily's favorite. 

I gave Aidan the option for dinner tonight since he has turned up his nose on the last 2 nights for some reason..... he selected chicken wings in hot sauce. I was sure he would select Chicken Tikka Masala but he heard about the issue finding chicken the last couple of weeks so went with the wings. I do have frozen chicken in the freezer... but he wanted this so it will be dinner tonight. Probably with pasta salad and celery and carrot sticks I think.

I hope to post a completed Hexagons quilt tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Weekend...

 I have no clue where the week went! I know I have been concentrating on hand stitching the hexagons together and have half the quilt together. Not sure if the other half will get finished this month or not. We will see how the beginning of this week goes I guess.  I'll keep concentrating on hand stitching the hexagons together. This half is 88x34. The front and the back.

I did take a break and thought about the Table Scrap Challenge mid week. Thursday I had all these ideas running through my head - yellow dreseden plates made into a sunflower runner, maybe some tulips in red and yellow.... alas... time got to me (and I don't know where I put the Quilters Patch book where I was going to pull the flower patterns from!) and as I was looking for things I found this set of 4 blocks with some yellow... and flowers .... the two prompts for March! I put them together and did some quilting and finished hand stitching the binding on it this morning! My entry for the March Table Scrap Challenge. I believe this is the Tiffany's magic stars pattern found on Joyful's blog.

Thursday evening was shopping for the troop sleep in at the church we meet at. Friday to Saturday around noon was the troop sleepover. Let's just say not much sleep was had but it was great to see all 6 girls together having fun. They baked a cake, got to experience plan B ( it rained all day Thursday and I could not get the camp fire started!) of making smores in the microwave. Pancakes and sausage for breakfast. They did a great job cleaning up and then while waiting for their rides were sitting outside in the shade playing a game of UNO. Me.... took a long nap Saturday afternoon! Then Aidan tried warming up pizza for dinner and the microwave decided it was done. Greg and I headed to Lowes to pick up a new one and got a counter one rather than the over the stove.... which meant I needed to clear off a counter, find where to put stuff (yes, Joy, I will be getting rid of things!). We will replace the old microwave with a range hood we think.... or just remove it and add pop up lights under the cabinet? Not sure yet. No way to vent it outside so still considering.... knowing they will probably be taking our house and property for a road project expansion in the next few years we really don't want to invest a lot of $ into it. 

I also found the remaining butterfly wings that need to get appliqued down to their background this year. The yellow for March and the Pink for April with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I am a bit behind with this challenge this year but scraps are very forgiving and will wait patiently for next year's turn at them. I am sew glad I decided to use a big safety pin to keep these all attached! 

After a long overdue clean of the house today... I will be in the sewing room prepping the last of the Memory quilt blocks with interfacing so I can begin stitching that very large quilt together. Once that quilt is finished I think I will become much more productive in the sewing room. 

Linking up with The Rainbow Scrap Challenge and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Sunday.....

The end is in sight! All 8 sections are pieced. Now to stitch all those sections together to get a finished quilt! All hand pieced and stitched starting in Jan 2021 with one per day 'ish'. My quilt as you go hexagons have 384 hexagons with a 2 inch finished size. It is 68x88 inches - so a very large quilt! I used extra warm and natural batting pieces for the batting on this - a great use of those cut off edges from other quilts.

 I finished up the last section on Wednesday and then the kids and I headed to the beach for a few days. Hubby had to stay home and continue with his college online classes.... and took care of the animals. We go over to Cocoa Beach since hubby used to live on Merritt Island in the 90's and worked for a company with offices on the beach in Cocoa. 

Some beach sunflowers on the walk to the beach.

Florida Sea Grapes - planted as a wind break and to help stabilize the sand dunes.

Thursday night was a full moon at the beach.

Friday - jumping the waves. They went and got the boogie boards after this. The waves were great for that.

Sunrise Friday morning. Not quite above the clouds at this point.

I love watching all the birds at the beach. 

I remembered to bring the Bocci Ball set this time. We played a bunch of this at the beach.

The Falcon 9 rocket launch very early Saturday morning (12:42AM) from the beach. The boy was very happy. The rumble of the rocket is amazing.

After a great nights sleep in our own beds, I am enjoying my last day of vacation with a little sewing. Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Hexagon QAYG - 8th section is done!

This is the final section all stitched together! Now to get all 8 sections stitched together. That process will start on Sunday I think. 

Ollie cat testing for softness.

Since horses was cancelled Saturday due to the weather I got her scheduled for a Tuesday afternoon riding lesson this week. It was our first time at the new facility and I admit - we got a little lost trying to find it. The signs are not up yet so I did have to make a call and ask where the heck they were! We found it and Emily got a long time on Princess in the arena. I think it might have been close to a month since she had ridden. She was pretty tired after the one hour lesson. 
 

Hubby is staying home to care for the animals and work on his classwork while I take the kids over to the beach for a few days. I don't expect any stitching to get done but I will take some knitting for dish cloths with me just in case. We are hoping to see the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch late Friday night. Fingers crossed it goes off while we are over there.

Memory Quilt progress

 I have a question out on the size. I have made about 30 - 12 inch blocks so far. I have a question out to the future owner as to what size they want it. twin - 60x84, big throw of 72x72 or double of 84x84. 

Lessons learned - use interfacing on everything except non stretchy jeans! I need to unpick about 3 blocks and add interfacing and then will restitch. I'll make a few more blocks today and then will be stitching it together. My hope is to pin it tonight and quilt it tomorrow. Fingers crossed. I used my trusty 6.5 inch ruler to make most of the blocks. 

Sunday

 I believe I am down to the last hexagon section to be stitched! I still need to whip stitch the other 7 sections together but great progress is being made! Peanut needed to inspect them.

I finished the 7th section last night while watching Murdoch Mysteries on Hulu. I think I am on season 3. I try to watch one episode a night and do a little stitching on these hexagons.

I have a trip over to SkyZone with Emily today. She is meeting a friend of hers from school to jump for an hour. We will be going through the area where a EF1 tornado touched down yesterday morning. Thankfully no injuries were reported but lots of roof damage and trees uprooted. We just had strong rain at our house and then nice cooler weather for the afternoon. Emily and I tackled cleaning the chicken coop and she changed out their water buckets and food. I think the girls were happy to have people out in the back yard with them for a few hours. Aidan did some weeding in the front beds and then was out back puttering around. Lily the chicken still loves being a parrot, she perches up on his shoulder and just stays there! Silly girl. 

I'd better pop into the sewing room and work some more on the Memory quilt before I head out for Sky Zone. I'll try and pick up a backing for it while I am out today as well. 

Linking up with the other Slow Stitchers at Kathy's Quilts.

Yellow Saturday....

 

A little bit of yellow bits were stitched this week. I added 2 of the yellow 16 patch blocks and a couple more of the yellow and blue friendship stars. 

I have spent way too much time today checking out the damage online from the Thunderstorms that went through this morning. No damage in my immediate area but about 10-15 minutes away they think a possible tornado touched down along a long stretch - close to State Rd 200 and I-75. So far - no injuries or death reported. The temps are much cooler today after the front went through - around 60 instead of 80+ like yesterday and freezing temps in the high 20s overnight! 

Horses was cancelled this morning - lots of rain and the new venue does not have a roof. I'll have to get her riding lessons rescheduled for early this week, although there will be some rain over the next few days.

It is also the weekend to turn the clocks forward tonight. I hope the cats will allow me to sleep in that extra hour tomorrow morning!

Linking up with the RSC before I head back into the sewing room and prep more clothing with interfacing for a memory quilt.

Progress....

 I finished the 6th section of the hexagons last night. This one took the longest as I had to make a bunch more of the hexagons to 'finish' off the odd bits leftover from the end of the months... and add 4 yellows as February was 28 days so no extra's. The last 2 sections are already in sets of 4 so it should go together pretty quickly.

As I have been working on these I have noticed the last 2 months that threading needles and looking at the stitching up close to whip stitch together has been more difficult. I had an eye appointment yesterday. My last one was in 2018! Yikes, I did not realize it had been that long. I have prescription sunglasses for a slight adjustment on distance for driving. He actually backed that off slightly.... not bad for my 49 year old eyes! He did recommend slight help with the readers. I don't have eye insurance so opted to hit CVS this morning and picked up a pair of 'readers' for +1 as it said on my prescription.  $20 compared to over $300! I put them on when I got home and it does make a difference on the close up. I could read it before but it is just like bolding the type when I have them on. Makes the type a little clearer and crisp. We will see how it works later today when I do some hand stitching. They had about 6 pairs to choose from. I went with the purple ones. The blue ones were a close second.

I did pick up some more interfacing on my way to the appointment yesterday so I can prep a few more of the shirt material for the memory quilt. I hope to lay it out today after another hour or two of prepping and cutting. I am off next week and other than a few days at the beach with the kids, I hope to get this quilt sewn together and quilted and bound so I can get it to Olivia. She has waited way too long for her quilt. 

Time for a quick walk before it rains or gets too hot and then a shower and into the quilt room I go! I saw these wild turkeys last night on my walk before the rains started. I wonder if I will see them again today?

Sunday....

 It is almost to a slow down timeframe in my household! After the go, go, go for the last 2 months I am not quite sure what to do with myself! Emily had her Advanced band competition yesterday which her Dad was tagged to attend and cheer her on. I was at a Cookie booth to sell girl scout cookies for our troop all morning. I have officially decided I am done and this is my last year leading a troop and I'll Juliette Emily next year. It was a scramble to offload the last of the cookies we had in stock yesterday. I have one more case of thin mints spoken for that will be picked up later today. I did drop off 14 boxes of assorted cookies to our Home Town Hero's yesterday - We donated them to our local fire station and ambulance crew. Lets just say there was a huge smile on their faces when I dropped off the box and said -'Thank you for all you do.'.

Kids are off to Grandma's house for the day - the first time in over a month I think! I need to do some cleaning (sigh, I've put it off long enough I guess!) and then I will have to finish cutting out the memory quilt things so I can get that sewn together. She really wants her quilt so I MUST get it finished for her. 

I will take some time later today to add more stitches to the Hexagon QAYG to get another section together. This is the one that I needed to add more hexagons to in order to have the right number to finish off the quilt. The Thomas the train and the bees make me smile on this one! I am itching to finish up the Hexagons so I can get back to hand quilting my Endless Diamond quilt in the hoop. 5 Hexagon QAYG sections completed of 8 - working on section 6 now. 

As for the butterfly's - I had a thought Thursday night and I think I am going to go with it. Instead of using fabric for the body of the butterfly, I am going to embroider it! We will see how it turns out. I did get some black embroidery thread so I'll give it a try and see how it looks. I also need to prep the yellow butterfly for applique to the background this month as well. It looks a little off kilter in the photo - and it is slightly higher on one end in the photo - but I'm going to leave it. When in nature is anything truly 'perfect'? 

Linking up with the other Slow Turtle Stitchers at Kathy's Quilts. 

March..... One a Day?

I was just looking at quilt sites on Facebook last night (I know - dangerous seeing so many pretty quilts I want to make them ALL!) and saw some friendship stars. With Yellow/Gold being the color for March.... and yellow and blue the colors for Ukraine I think I will make some friendship stars in yellow and blues this month. Maybe one per day?  Here are the first 3 for the month. I might have stopped at Joanns after a leader meeting Wednesday night and got a few yards of Kona Buttercup yellow. I did not have this in mind when I got it... I was thinking blue dresden plates on yellow! 

 

Sunday this one was all over me ALL DAY LONG! Peanut is a very needy cat!  I was gone all day Saturday and this was my punishment for leaving him home with just Emily all day.

Aidan moved from the robotics competition disappointment to the 3rd quarter report and project he needed to finish that was due on Tuesday. He had 400 words going into the weekend and needed to double that. I think it was closer to 1200 when he finished the report on Stonewall Jackson. The other piece was making a face/body using a 2 liter bottle or a coat hanger. He went with the bottle and despite starting it around 8:30PM Monday night and working a couple of hours and then another hour first thing in the morning this was the result. I think it turned out really good! I did not help at all - other than walking into the craft room and he said what he needed and I pulled those items out and then left the room! (grey fabrics, buttons, yarn, something for the head - the top of a maracas, paints, googlie eyes, glue and the hot glue gun, and cardboard for the arms). I only have a little of the paint on one of my quilting rulers. 

Monday was carnitas (recipe under the recipe tab) made in the crock pot. There was a sale on Boston Butt Roast. Tuesday - Aidan and I had the butternut squash, brussels sprout and bacon meal while Greg had leftovers and Emily made egg salad. Wednesday was pressed cuban sandwiches. I need to seal a meal the rest of the carnitas for a few freezer meals. 

I went and got another one and have crockpot pulled pork working now. I started it around 11 so not sure it will be done in time for dinner or not. It appeared I was out of both of these freezer meals so it was time to stock it up again!

Time for a walk before heading back into the sewing room.