Wishing for Spring

We've had a beautiful weekend here in Maryland, it makes me look forward to Spring days with the windows left open, the singing of the frogs and butterflies flitting around.
This past week I completed this sweet butterfly mini using the free pattern offered by lillyella stitchery on Craftsy.  

Craftsy is my go-to place for finding new and gorgeous paper piecing patterns.  There are some free ones as well as lots of reasonably priced ones.   Sometimes I stick to the easy to moderate patterns but I also like to challenge myself with the more difficult patterns.  I believe this My Little Pony pillow is the most difficult pattern I have tackled to date. 

Unfortunately I don't have a better pic of it because I made it for a swap I was in a couple of years ago and <gasp> forgot to take pictures when it was complete.  (It breaks my heart, even to this day!)

Today I'm working on some patchwork that I've been wanting to do.  Hope to have an update for you soon!

I'm Bringing Hexie Back

My go-to quilting project has always been (and will always be) Hexies.  There is something so soothing about basting these little suckers that just makes me happy.

I have a lot a hexies.  You're thinking: So do I!  No, I have A LOT of hexies. Making them helps me relax and de-stress.  After a trying day at work I will sometimes prop myself up in bed and baste hexie after hexie after hexie.

A small sample of some of my hexies

At one point in my quilting journey, hexies confused me.  After all, my Mom hand sewed roughly 20 hexie quilts with no basting or paper, why do I have fiddle with that stuff?  The answer: because I'm not my mom and she had been quilting for so long she could literally envision a perfect 1/4" seam on each hexie as she added them to her project.

So I started basting hexies...badly.  I tried glue sticks and couldn't get the glue undone afterwards.  I tried heavy cardstock for sturdiness and had trouble stitching the hexies together.  What's a girl to do? Search Instagram and the Internet and find someone who knows exactly what they are doing!

This is how I first stumbled across Lori Holt several years ago.  After reading her awesome post on basting hexies, something clicked in my head and I got it!
If you need a refresher or just a new way to baste your hexies, take a peek at her tutorial here.

Basting Hexies the Lori Holt way

Fast forward to today and I have hexies up to my eyeballs!  Because I don't hexie with any sort of project in mind.  I hexie because I love it and because sometimes you just need to relax and stitch.

I have several hexie projects in the works currently and I'm sure I'll have more and more and more as time goes on.  I will share a couple of finished projects and some WIPs soon.

Don't Look Back

So, I'm a bad blogger.  At least I used to be.  I would create a blog, post a bunch of random things, then trail off into oblivion.  I think the problem was that I didn't have a focus.  So I'm going to move forward - not looking back to my past mistakes in blogging.
This blog will focus on my love of quilting, specifically patchwork and paper piecing (bet you could guess that from the blog name!)
My favorite quilting technique is paper piecing.  This is because it's so precise and very hard to mess up once you get the hang of it.  Lately, I've been dipping my feet into patchwork projects beyond using squares like my Mom taught me at a very young age.
Keep in mind, this is a learning process for me, even thought I grew up in a quilting and sewing home with my Mom and my Nanny holding quilting bees in the living room.  They would literally set up a huge quilt frame in our living room for a weekend and completely hand quilt a quilt in two days.  I wish we had pictures of this, it was a great experience and my siblings and I were always encouraged to help out.  Even when our stitches were huge and we didn't always make it through all three layers, every stitch we did stayed in the finished quilt.
I hope you will stick around and come back to visit often.  I plan on having tutorials and give aways and (crossing my fingers here) guest bloggers.

Stay tuned for my first quilty post!

A beautiful hand pieced & hand quilted hexi quilt by my mom, Lucy