Hexies n Houses

With all the sunshine, and the World Cup, and my growing addiction (!) my pile of hexies is growing.  I have sewn about 10 together into flowers.  It takes about half an hour and sits very comfortably with watching a bit of footie or Doctor Who or Star Trek (can you tell I live in a household full of boys?!).  I am tempted to start sewing the flowers together now, so I don't have a massive job to sew them all together at the end, but then that would spoil the fun I have juggling the flowers round and seeing how they look.  Ooh, decisions, decisions.



I have been working a bit on Waif's houses too, trying to get my head round putting them together into a finished quilt top.  I figured the easiest way to do this would be to make them into blocks the same width, then sew them together into columns.  I've done three so far, and am quite enjoying playing around with them to make them up to the right size.  I wonder if I need more trees...?  Or stars?  Or flying geese?  Or half square triangles...?

A Thrifty Week

Ooh, it's been an exciting week of bargains, charity shop finds and swapping stuff.

First of all I spotted this book for sale in a charity shop:



It has some sweet projects in it (though really not sure about the patchwork shower cap ;-)) and quite an extensive section on English paper piecing, including this picture of an antique English quilt from the 1830s which I could gaze at for hours:



Even better, there was a leaflet inside from The Quiltery (not dated) all about hexagons:



I was quite intrigued that both of these referred to simply backing the hexagon patchwork, rather than actually quilting it.

The second excitement of the week was receiving this fab selection of 2.5inch squares from a scrap swap on Flickr.  Thanks Jan!  25 more hexies for the price of a first class stamp!



And thirdly, drumroll please......................................................

I am now (thanks to a lovely lady on Freecycle) the proud owner of a 1940 Singer handcrank sewing machine.  70 years old and she works beautifully.  Can't wait to use her for some Morsbagging.

I have mostly been...

...making Morsbags



...and sewing hexagons:



I have decided to sew together hexies into individual flowers of similar colours as I go along so I don't have a huge task of sewing them all together at the end!  I am not sure how I will be arranging them but will just see when I've got enough, whether they look better grouped together by colour or laid out randomly.

Anna Williams at Lazy Gal Quilting

Have a look at Tonya's blog.  She is hoping to get AQS to reprint a book of Anna Williams' quilters.    You can read all about Anna Williams here.  Her quilts were wonderful and liberated and improvised.  Tonya did it for Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking  - let's see if she can do it for Anna Williams!

If you would be interested in seeing this book published, leave a comment on Tonya's Lazy Gal Quilting blog.  The link is here:

http://lazygalquilting.blogspot.com/2010/06/anna-williams-possible-book-reprint.html

On Safari in Norfolk

Mum and I spent a lovely morning at Mileham Village Hall this Saturday for The African Fabric Shop's annual safari to sunny Norfolk.  They had a beautiful display of baskets, African fabrics, beads, buttons...



I couldn't resist the temptation to add a few bits and pieces to my stash :-)



The Castle Quilters hosted the event and they had a lovely display of three dimensional quilted objects (bags, mobiles etc) made for a recent challenge using the African fabrics.

And homemade bakewell tart was a definite added bonus ;-P