15 minute challenge ~ feb. 20

more begonia love

the phrase "an incredible lightness of being" comes to mind . . .  



my weekly report card for the 15 minute challenge:

tuesday, feb. 14th: applique on secret birthday blocks

wednesday, feb. 15th: sampler practice with TAST (detached chain stitch) ~ detached chain stitch onto stocking

thursday, feb. 16th: fabric covered button using the detached chain stitch

friday, feb. 17th: prewashed, ironed &amp cut background fabric for hexie project ~ basted 7 background hexies

saturday, feb. 18th: basted 11 background hexies

sunday, feb. 19th: applique on secret birthday blocks

monday, feb. 20th: basted 9 background hexies ~ made 4 pinwheel quilt blocks for a guild member

if you would like to see what others are doing with their 15 minutes or you're interested in joining in, you should visit Kate at Life in Pieces. she will be doing some fun give-aways during the month of february for those participating in the 15 minute challenge.
i have found it to be an excellent way to continue making my own sewing/creative time a priority.

now to catch you up with my hexie project.
many years ago i thought it would be great to have a grandmother's flower garden quilt and i promptly chose a yellow fabric that i thought would make a good center for my flowers and began making them. it was my first experience with the english paper piecing method and i liked the foolproof accuracy of it as well as the hand sewing involved. i believe all of my 'flowers' are of a different fabric although i haven't actually gone carefully through them to check. i have quite a few but don't remember the number off of the top of my head.  at some point i got distracted and although i thought about the project and even occasionally looked at it briefly and once or twice made a real attempt to begin again, in the end, i was still looking at an unfinished quilt.

so sometime last year i seen various other blogs with a hexie wednesday project badge and read a few blog posts that eventually inspired me back into wondering about getting mine done. i got it out once again and decided that i needed to think about what colors/fabrics i was going to use between my flowers as a background area. i thought about yellow but decided against that. i eventually decided that a variety of greens was the way to go. i basted some green hexagons only to decide that browns would be better. so i basted some brown hexagons and prepped many more for working on while i recovered from my hip surgery. i happily basted many brown hexagons while under the influence of painkillers. at some point i was jarred into the realization that i hadn't made anything for my guild's annual christmas bazaar and time was running way short . . . so i decided to sew some of the brown hexagons into a doll quilt. i bordered it with a  vintage pink calico that i found in my stash, hand quilted it, added a dark brown binding and donated it. ta-da~!

that was all well and good  and i was happy to be able to contribute. however, i still needed to finish the original flower garden/honeycomb quilt. after the chaotic christmas season  passed i got back to working on it and decided that i wanted to sew a few of the brown hexies around one of the flowers to see how (fabulous) it was going to look. i got about halfway around when i decided that it was waaay too busy and not the look i wanted at all. i immediately removed them.
at this point i began to wonder if i was ever going to find just the look i wanted. i contemplated gently tucking the small box and it's contents back into the cupboard and pretend that it didn't exist for another ten or fifteen years. after all, there were certainly other unfinished projects that i could move on to.
in a last ditch effort i laid some of the flowers on top of various solid colored fabrics as well as a natural colored muslin to see if something would 'grab' me. no grabbing happened. i was beginning to get very discouraged when i ran the whole thing by a friend who suggested that i use a shirting as the background fabric.

so we tossed some flowers out onto one that i had handy and i thought it might actually work . . . i purchased a bit more of the same shirting and have now begun to baste shirting hexies. the next test will be sewing a few around one of the flowers . . .
i'd love to know what you think. 

recent gifts include:

• being able to help my daughter as she successfully patterned and constructed a bag for her laptop
• being gifted with a beautiful new sketchbook
• discovering pandora radio