Old Projects and Some New Ones

Hello Dear Readers

Today someone wished me a happy holiday, and I responded, "What holiday?"    I'm not totally sure what happened to the month of June, but it's almost over.   I spend a lot of summer afternoons sitting out on our screened porch with a big glass of iced tea listening to some music and doing some stitching.  The time just seems to fly, and the day is quickly over.   Here we call this "porch time" because when you are sitting out here in the quiet you really do lose all track of time.   I wish I could stop life just until I could get caught up.  But, since I can't do that I'll tell you a little about what I've been doing.

We spent almost 2 weeks at the end of May down in the Smoky Mountains.  This is the view from our cabin.   We've found a place that we can go to relax and get away from it all and just unplug and regroup until we get back there again.  

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While visiting Tennessee, I always get to make a trip over to Mountain Creek Quilt Shop.  It's always good to get to visit with Teri, the owner, and see just what is new at her shop.   Her shop is the only one that I've visited that carries Tilda fabrics.   Here are some that I bought on a previous trip.

These are the new ones that I bought last time along with a charm pack.

I wasn't sure what I was going to use them for, but when The New Hexagon book by Katja Marek came out, I ordered the paper pieces pack from paperpieces.com.   I had them sorted and stored with the book, so I thought I'd try the Tilda fabrics out on these blocks.

Here are the first dozen or so blocks.   I also used some polka dots that I bought at a shop in Lexington, KY, and some tiny pin stripes that are available at Back Door Quilts.   There are only 52 blocks in this quilt.  How long could that take?   I thought I could do about 10 a week and be finished in about 5 weeks.  I need to make up more block kits so I can keep going on this.  I thought this would be fun for a summer project.   

I also have enough Morning Glory blocks to make a small quilt.  These are all English Paper Pieced.

The pattern is by Annette Williams at www.sewingthegoodlife.com

This one is called 1797 Revisited.  If you are on Instagram, you can search #1797Revisited to see other's finished quilts.  I have a ton of hexagons cut, and I'll get back to this one day.  I bought my elongated hexagons at Yellow Creek Quilt Designs.   After I started cutting these, I ordered the next larger size and decided that I really liked the smaller size better.   If you take a look at the quilt it's kind of interesting.   You keep adding rows all the way around and eventually fill in the corners.   

These are my double hexagons.   I have 32 which was my plan for a quilt.  After I took this  photo, I started adding the path to the 1" hexagons.   I'm about a third of the way finished.   

This is a sew along that I started because I spent too much time on Instagram.  This is called 

Dutch American Sew Along.  #DutchAmericanSewAlong.   You request the PDF file from one of the girls on Instagram, and you cut them out and make the star.   I English Paper Pieced mine, and some are foundation paper piecing heirs.   This one attracted me because they are using Dutch chintz fabric.   I've had an envelope of chintz that I ordered from a shop in Texas that is no longer in business.   I think this was about 7 years ago.   So here was my chance to let those fabrics see the light of day.  The chintz is really beautiful as you can see in the last photo, but it is really stiff and hard to hand sew.   I went ahead and made the star anyway mostly because I knew it would be a challenge to get all 12 of those points to spin and lay flat in the middle.   

Then I found this blue fabric in my stash.   It's from the line Elizabeth's Dowry by Karen Styles.   I'm adding the half square triangles and will keep going until it feels like the right size.   

Here is the chintz that I have plus a couple of books just full of Dutch quilt inspiration.

That's all for now.   I'm sure there is something that I've forgotten so I'll try not to stay away so long next time.  

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today.