The start of something new

Hey, everyone! How's your Saturday? I had a great birthday yesterday. I got to have lunch with my family and then I spent some time working on a quilt.

I slept in a bit this morning, but only because I didn't go to bed until 2:00 a.m. Yup! I just couldn't put it down. I was working on a new quilt. And just in case you're asking, no, I haven't finished quilting the last one yet. But the most fun for me is the creative process of designing and piecing one together, so I have... uhh, at least 4 or 5 (maybe more) in progress. Now, don't get me wrong. I do finish them. In fact, I gave one to some special friends of ours last week.

Anyway, to get back to my new one. I've been seeing these on blogs recently - they call it one flower Wednesday. And the flowers that are referred to are flowers from Grandmother's Flower Garden. They are all made from hexagons and hand pieced. I thought it would be a nice portable project and there is no time limit. I haven't decided yet if I'll join the blogger group, but I did start my own.

The first thing I needed to do was make a hexagon pattern. I really had to stretch on this one. This would be really great to have a die to cut all these, but as far as I could find, the only one available is Accuquilt and it's too big to fit in my cuttlebug or big shot. One lady had her husband saw off about 1/4" and then file off the rough edges, but I don't know that I want to go that route. So, I copied the picture of the die into a word document and adjusted the size until I was satisfied, then printed it, cut it out and transferred it to template plastic. After all that, I don't think it's a perfect, perfect hexagon, but good enough. I'm actually using two sizes, because I'm doing English paper piecing, so the smaller one needs to be more accurate than the larger one. I'm cutting the pieces as much as possible with my rotary cutter to speed up the process.

I started this all about a week or so ago. I cut lots and lots and lots of paper hexagons and fabric hexagons. The paper ones can be used more than once, so I don't think I need to cut any more of those, but I still need to cut a lot more fabric ones. Each flower consists of 7 hexagons - 6 petals and 1 center. I won't go into all the detail of piecing them together. If you'd like that information, I can direct you to that. Just ask.

So, I've pieced 4 flowers together minus the center so far. I decided to applique each flower on a muslin background and putting the center in is part of that process. And last night I was appliqueing the first one. I did another one this morning. I almost forgot to pull the papers out of that one. I had it half stitched down, when I realized that and had to pull it up where it was glued to get the papers out.

Here's a picture. These haven't been pressed yet, so that's why you are seeing a lot of wrinkles. The muslin blocks are 7-1/2" square and will be 7" when finished. At this point, my plan is to put a scrappy sashing in between the blocks. I think that'll be fun to make.

*****Please note****

No one has guessed correctly yet on my blog candy post here. So keep on guessing on that post and if you already guessed there, take another guess on this post!

You've all been very generous in your guesses. A hint: I am part of the baby boom generation.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Be blessed.