Eleven-eleven-eleven-eleven

So, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 2011, I finished sewing the eleventh ring of hexies to my charm quilt. Cool, huh?

As well as the technicolour photo above, I took one in black and white to check out how the values were working out:



I think it's working out ;-)

Let the Liberation Begin!

Well, I made it to the Festival of Quilts and yes, it was awesome and no, one day wasn't enough. But this year I prioritised seeing the exhibition quilts (I did take photos, but not sure of the copyright issues of putting them on the interwebs) over and above checking out all the stalls, so came home with a relatively modest amount of stuff:



Mostly some delicious Kona solids from the Simply Solids stall, plus a spotty Kaffe layer cake, and a charm pack...and yes, I succumbed to the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt book! I have been studying the blocks and a lot can be liberated by using corner cover triangles for HST and flying geese type units; or cut wonkily by stacking fabrics; and some could be made conventionally but oversized and then wonkified by recutting on the slant. It's going to be a fun project for sure :-)

And I made a start on it today. Here are my first two blocks. First up, Autumn Tints:



As you can maybe tell, I messed up with the placement of my four patches, but ho-hum, this is a liberated version and I like the way they look, so I won't be getting out the seam ripper!!

Second up is Big Dipper:



Love how it turned out :-)

I can't quite believe that I have managed to keep up with the ICAD challenge, although I admit some days it hasn't been easy:



and then the boys show me up with their creativity (first by Gman, second by Waif):



We will definitely keep going until the end of August. But after that, I think we will all be desperate to create something BIG!

Unruly Nephew (and Wife?)

True to my promise to myself, I have made a start on my next present for Allie's Christmas Through the Year challenge. I am making name panels for all my nieces and nephews using Unruly Quilter Tonya's techniques. You can see previous panels here, here, here and here. This one is for my second eldest nephew, Charlie:



As you can see, it's not quilted yet. I think I will have to keep the quilting pretty simple given the crazy nature of the background fabric!

And, then I have this Unruly Farmer's Wife thing going on in my head. You will probably have seen all over blogland, peeps taking part in the Farmers Wife Quiltalong. Now, I don't really *do* making other people's quilt patterns, or following rules and templates but I keep seeing the blocks and thinking "ooh, that could be free pieced". So now I'm thinking "how about a liberated/free pieced/wonky farmers wife quilt?". And I could call it the Unruly Wife, which would be much more up my street!! I'm still thinking about it...but it is growing and growing in my head :-)

And I realised I haven't blogged about the ICAD Challenge for a while. I have still been creating an index card a day, although I admit it is getting harder to know what to do each time! Here's a few recent ones:

Cards inspired by my love of quilts:


Doodley ones:



Favourite poetry:


Cards reflecting my spiritual journey:


But of all the index cards I have made, none of them make me smile as much as this one made by my six year old son, Waif:



I love it!

Good Things, Not Such Good Things and Better Things

I forgot to post my Good Things for last week:



Pema Chodron's quote of the week reminded me of the reasons why I started keeping the good things journal:

CHERISH ORDINARY MOMENTS

In our most ordinary days we have moments of happiness, moments of comfort and enjoyment, moments of seeing something that pleased us, something that touched us, moments of contacting the tenderness of our hearts. We can take joy in that. I find that it’s essential during the day to actually note when I feel happiness or when something positive happens, and to begin to cherish those moments as precious. Gradually we can begin to cherish the preciousness of our whole life just as it is, with its ups and downs, its failures and successes, its roughness and smoothness.

I needed reminding of the good things when I managed to do this:



Yep, I sewed my star together back to front. Grrrrrrrr. And after doing the neatest whip stitches I had ever managed too :-(. I was so ready to just throw it out and stamp my feet, but in the end I decided to unpick the stitches and sew it together the right way round and here's how it turned out:



Not so bad, but as you can see, the points don't quite meet in the middle, meaning there's an itty bitty hole there. Ho-hum.

The day after this sewing disaster, my copy of Jinny Beyer's Quiltmaking by Hand book was delivered. Wow, what an amazingly beautiful and thorough book!



I was interested that Jinny more or less totally dismisses English Paper Piecing as a cumbersome waste of time when hand piecing cottons. That, coupled with seeing Gayle's amazing point-to-point sewn hexagons, has made me think about reconsidering paper piecing. I will definitely continue with the hexagon charm quilt (I have over 300 hexies already basted lol!) but am wondering whether to abandom EPP diamonds in favour of learning point-to-point sewing techniques. Oooh, I dunno.

In non-sewing news, I have continued with the ICAD Challenge. This week I have mostly been playing with Sharpies. I just love the saturated colours. Not so much the smell though!

First Hexagon Star

first hexagon star, a photo by Viv J M on Flickr.

It's a star. Inside a hexagon. Nuff said :-)

Dotty over the Hexalong

If you don't already know, there's a Hexalong going on over at Lily's Quilts. Why don't you join in the fun?!

I am planning to continue with my hexagon charm quilt. Progress as of today here:



But I have also been falling in love with BIG hexies made up of smaller parts, in particular 60 degree diamond star hexies. I have put together a bit of an inspiration gallery over on Flickr:

Hexalong Inspirations, a gallery on Flickr.

I think (don't hold me to this!) I want to do something like summerfete's Summer of Love quilt, which you can see on her blog here. And because I'm feeling a bit dotty, I thought I would make all the stars with dotty and spotty fabrics. I'm not sure how I managed to inadvertently collect so many spotty fabrics but I pulled together all these from my stash:



Cos of using the incompetech graph paper (thanks for the tip Lilys Quilts) if I decide the dotty stars are just toooooo much I can make some big plain coloured hexies to go in between them. I am thinking maybe light grey for those, I am just too grubby for white lol.

Oooh, the excitement!!

And because my ICADs reflect what I am reading about, or doing, or thinking about, you won't be surprised to see my card for today: