Happy birthday/blogiversary to my sister!

Have you met my sister, Carla, from Lollyquiltz? Well, she isn't my real sister, not from a biological standpoint. However, as we have gotten to know each other a little better, we have decided that perhaps we are sisters separated at birth. SO many similarities!

*We were both born in the same year. I would say which year but I didn't get her permission--and she is a teensy bit older so I need to respect that. :)
*We will both be married for 38 years this year.
*She went to college in Kansas. I went to college in Kansas.
*We both met our husbands in college.
*We both have red hair.
*We absolutely adore our grandchildren.

*We are both quilters. Which binds us together (yes, I could not resist the pun...) for sure!
*We are both hexie obsessed.

(Carla's hexies, organized by color and lots of them are already sewn together!)

(I have quite a few more than this, but they are not sewn together yet).

*We are both doing a quilt based on a Kleenex box. The same Kleenex box! (Imagine our surprise when we discovered that little odd fact...)

 Carla's is almost done:

Mine, not surprisingly, is still living in my head:

I attribute her progress on the hexies and Kleenex-box quilt to the fact that she is older. That seems reasonable, doesn't it?

She has a tremendous sense of color.

And I'll admit to being a bit envious of the beautiful backdrops she uses for her quilt photography.

To celebrate this auspicious one-year blogiversary, we are giving away one of my selvage pincushions, appropriately named "Four Seasons." Head on over to her blog and do some reading. While you're there, you'll notice that Carla has some awesome tutorials, so for a chance to win the pincushion, check out the tutorials on her sidebar, and then come back and tell me which one you would like to try first. The winner will be chosen  on Sunday, 6 p.m. PDT. Want an extra chance to win? If you can guess (in a separate comment) which one might possibly be MY favorite, well, you'll get a second chance to win. Happy reading, everyone. And happy first blogiversary, Carla!

Tuesday Thoughts: A little on edge

Warning: this will be a picture-heavy blog post. On a variety of completely unrelated things...

For my spool quilt, I had to pull out a lot of selvages based on color, whereas my normal "filing" system is by topic. So after all the blocks were completed, my selvages were a mess. I spent the afternoon organizing them.

There was a box of super cool selvages. These will be fun to incorporate into something special.

Oh, and I found a typo...

I had just finished, when the mail arrived, along with another box of really awesome selvages.

So this is my plan:

And I have started working on my hexies again. I had 25 hexies per compartment in this plastic container. I guess Levi had a better system in mind...

"Grandma, I'll be really careful..."

Where did our favorite hexie go? The monkey with the pirate bandana...

I went to the grocery store to stock up on food for Super  Bowl. I don't have a sister, but these were kind of fun labels:

Not sure how I feel about these next to each other though...

Basting quilts? In my opinion, the.worst.quilting.job.ever. I'm trying a new product. So far I like it. "Like" as in I didn't completely hate basting the quilt top. We'll see how they work with a combination of machine and hand quilting.

Color Therapy Thursday--the hexie lovers edition

I know there are lot of hexie lovers out there.

Jessica Jones from How About Orange (and I also know there are a lot How About Orange readers out there too...) posted the link to this freebie the other day, a hexie notecard!

Or possibly the inspiration for your next hexie project using Kona cotton....

You can get the free download here. Isn't it amazing? Yeah, I knew you all would think so too...

Tuesday giveaway

About a month ago, I jumped on the hexie bandwagon. Thanks to Texas Freckles, I'm making a charm quilt, so every hexie will be different.

I found this really great Lilly Pulitzer "cheater" fabric. Each square has the bright and happy prints that Lilly Pulitzer is famous for, and each is 4 inches. There are quite a few different  designs in each fabric repeat. But I only need one of each. So....something to give away.

Does anyone want these? Are you making hexies too? If not, what other ideas do you have for this fabric?

Just leave a comment and the random number generator will pick two winners on Thursday, 5 p.m. PST.

Monday Mailbox

INCOMING:
We were out of town last week, so I went to the post office this morning to retrieve this package that arrived. From India.

They spend a lot of time on packaging. Here is my package, from the outside in: a cloth envelope, whipstitched closed by hand on the back.

Then sewn shut by machine:

Then covered in mesh-backed paper:

Then covered in plastic. Getting closer...

Finally. Beautiful napkins to go with my Fiestaware dishes:

OUTGOING:
To my hexie swap partner:

These little owls always want to steal the show.

A bag to put them in (because hexies should travel in style, in a little fabric bag made out of hexagon fabric!)

All tied and ready to go:

My adorable little hexagon helper, looking extra cool in his shades. He always looks so serious when he is sorting these hexies. Apparently it takes a lot of concentration.

Note to my hexie swap partner

I have almost all of my swap hexies made and they will be ready to go into the mail on Monday.

I worked on them outside this afternoon:

And this was my view:

I carefully put them back in their cute little box:

And the next thing I knew, they had jumped out to pose next to this piece of driftwood.

I'm pretty sure the little owl was the ringleader. So if you find a grain of sand, just dust it off...

Taking the show on the road

Tomorrow morning Mark and I leave for our management week at Lakeview Cottages. Thinking optimistically that I will actually have some time to relax after management duties are done, I have prepared this little travel box, purchased on sale at Borders yesterday:

I put two little Mary Engelbriet magnets in the lid just in case I need pins for something. Probably not. But it never hurts to be prepared. And the magnets are too cute.

Lots of fabric squares cut and ready to go, with no repeats (so far...):

My organizer, sadly which is still looking quite empty:

And some of my favorites, which I get out occasionally just to sigh over:

And in case you are wondering, the car will be full because I'm also taking along all my friends, old and new (even the loudmouth, although I'm bringing along a sibling who seems a little more subdued):

Here's hoping no fights break out in the car on the drive up, and that we will all come home happy, rested and well bonded with each other in our respect friendship groups!

Someone put a hex on me

I'm not sure who the exact culprit is because there are so many suspects! Highly suspicious: Joan:

and Jennifer:

Good grief: Both Joan and Jennifer have hexes in their header picture, constantly reminding me how fabulous hexes are.

It could be Crystal:

or Terri:

Melanie might have been the actual spell caster, because I signed up for her Hexagon Charm Quilt Piece-Along. Yep, I'm pretty sure it was Melanie. She even posted a helpful video.

Chris from Izzy Inspired posted an invaluable tutorial on sewing the hexes together when you get to that stage. I've already tried her method and it worked for me.

I am not new to hexagon piecing. A couple of years ago I started a Grandmother's Flower Garden using the plastic templates, which I thought would be helpful. Not.A.Fan. Also I cut the fabric in hexagon shapes because I always thought that was how you had to do it. The fabric would slip, even though I pinned it in the center, and by the time I got around to the last side of the hexagon there was hardly any fabric to work with. I put everything in a ziplock, in a drawer, and decided hexagons were not for me.

(Anyone interested in some hexagons out of Civil War reproduction fabric?)

Cardstock precut templates? Fabric cut in squares rather than hexagons? Sign me up!

And did I mention "cheater" cloth? I'm doing Melanie's "charm" hexagon quilt, which means each hexagon will be out of a different fabric. I found this as I was going through a fat quarter stack to use for a different quilt- along. Bingo.

I'm not sure exactly how I found this little etsy shop, but she was destashing some Lilly Putlizer prints. Hello? LP cheater cloth? Another score.

And this a brand-new line of fabric, "Party Dress" by Mo Bedell for Blue Hill Fabrics, has cheater cloth in each of the three colorways. It's even printed in hexagon shapes.

So Melanie's piece-along calls for 1,173 hexagons. Remember I said it was a charm quilt? Each of those 1,173 hexagons will be in a different fabric. So Mark was wondering how I would possibly have enough fabric to make over a thousand hexes in different fabrics. Hello. He lives in the same house with me. He surely has noticed all the stacks of fabric everywhere...I kind of stammered something like, "Uh, honey, I have lots of scraps....." Whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm under a hex of a spell.