Fabric choices and a technical quandry

Good morning! I have hexie news today! I am within a few green hexies of finishing the body of my small hexie project.  I need to choose a blue for the border, sew in a few blue hexies to fill in and then cut and sew on the border fabric. First things first... WHAT blue to use? I have, um, a few to choose from since blue is a favorite color around here and I have been collecting 30's repros for a while...

I have the blue versions of both the green fabrics I used (one is in the upper left corner and the other is not shown) as well as the blue version of the red flower centers (upper right corner). All of the fabrics shown have a very small second color to them, either red or yellow, pink in one case. I think from the photo the upper right corner fabric is winning out in my opinion. It has the right value to compliment the body of the quilt. I also like the  one at the far right and the one on the far left bottom. What do you think? I think I will look at them all together for a while, get your opinions and let it sit before I make a choice.

Now for the technical questions... all you hexie makers out there need to tell me how to proceed! I want the yellow flowers to have a complete (or pretty close) green hexie border around them surrounded completely by blue. I had planned on making the top and bottom edges straight (sewing across the points of the straight line of hexes) and filling in the 'dent' in the middle of the far right and left edges with three blue hexies. I think I will also need two blues in each corner to bring that out square. Then what? Should I unfold the seam allowances of the outer hexies and then sew a straight border strip on each edge? Should I just bag the whole sewing thing and applique the top onto a large piece of blue? Clearly, this is my first hex project and I am unsure how to finish it off! Advice please!

If you want to see what everyone else is up to this week hop on over to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday. 

Wednesday's creative pursuits

I actually got to sew today! So my 'art' today for Art Every Day are the new crumb blocks I made and the new layout I am testing on the design wall. I will also link this post to Jo's latest Crumb post over at Jo's Country Junction as she is the hostess of the Crumb Along that spurred me on with this project.  Along with this I have actual progress to report on my hexie project for both WIP  and One Flower Wednesday! Yea me!

So let's get rolling. These are the new crumb blocks that were made today. I have eeked out a few others, or parts of others in the past two weeks but these made it onto the wall from the sewing table today. I made/completed 4 4" blocks and two more 8.5" wonky stars. I have been contemplating how to finish this quilt off. I think I may put a 2" border of my accent color (gold) and a row of 4" crumb blocks all the way around. By my calculations, if it is a 7x7 layout of 8" finished blocks plus the 4" of border I should need 15 4" blocks for each side plus the 4 corners, for a grand total of 64 blocks. I started out with 40 4" blocks and have used maybe 20 of them for the wonky stars and a few 8" blocks. I need to get busy making more 4" blocks. Fortunately, they are fun to make, go quickly and use up lots of very small pieces!

This is the top half of the layout with a sample border. What do you think? I can stretch my border blocks by making some longer than 'regulation' like the line of flying geese shown above. That is a fun size to work on too. The gold border will be sections of various length of the gold fabrics I have in the stash (I think I will pull the orange square out of there... too distracting). More of this quilt can be found by searching for the tag "crumbs".

My hexie project has been creeping along. I did not get to work on it much this week, but it is showing progress. All full flowers and both half flowers are attached now (although both need an additional petal)  and I have a whole stack of  new green hexes ready to go. A blue border on this one is looking more and more likely, I will keep you posted!

Thanks for stopping by! I am enjoying 'making' myself work a little at a time at one of my many projects and passions on this, day two of Art Every Day!

Midweek Progress

Well, not as much to report as I would like, but isn't that always the case? Between a sick kid, a sick dog (don't ask what I've been cleaning up for the past two days!) and a sick me and a couple of non-quilting but legitimate sewing type projects the quilting stuff has been mostly sidelined this week.


 Currently in Progress:

• My Tweets BOM by Erin Russek - no movement since last week, although I peeked at her post on Monday and this month's block is awesome and will be downloadable on Friday!
• Crumb Along project with Jo at Jo's Country Junction - see my post from Monday, it is getting exciting and is the only quilting project I have worked much on this week.
• bonus triangle quilt no new progress this week

• Modern Workshop Jelly Roll quilt applique borders - I got both long borders sewn on and one of the short borders up on the wall with the quilt to figure color placement of the flowers. I was VERY disappointed to realize that the "short" borders will have just as many flowers as the long ones did (because the addition of the long borders also makes the quilt wider) and so will take just as long to applique all those silly things on there and just as long to starch and stitch all those leaves (4 leaves per flower = another 40 leaves x2 borders = 80 MORE.... ugh). I will show a photo when there is more progress on this 

On Deck: 

• Don't even talk to me about what is on deck... it might as well be UNDER the deck at this point.

New Projects: 

• Costumes for Cub Scouts, one down, one to go, plus some victory laurels to make

one Greek chiton down, one to go, ready for cutting out - and no, this is not the sick dog

• Hexie hand project... This is the one that saw the most progress this week because I had plenty of sit and wait time with the kids' lessons etc... 4 flowers complete, the 5th is almost ready for putting together and that might be all I need for the doll quilt size, plus a bunch of green. What do you think of the alternating greens?

• BSA fleece panels I found for my guys are being layered and "quilted" so you can see the fleur de lis on the backside (the yellow on the left is the back of the finished one) - trying to finish in time for fall camping, 1 is complete, the 2nd needs a little contrasting fringe and primitive quilting (and I have a third for my hubby because he kinda wants one too!)

Finishes:

well, um, one chiton is finished and one fleece throw is finished... does that count?

Check out what other people are finishing over at Freshly Pieced.