teal and grey hexie love

one thing about going away is that i get more handwork done than usual, since i rarely take my sewing machine with me. i'm still working on the project i started during this last trip, but it occurred to me that i never got around to blogging about the project i did on the LAST trip!

i posted an in progress picture last november.....




wanna see what they turned into?



a long long time ago, before Christmas last winter, i participated in a swap between the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild and the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild. since i'm a member of both guilds, i said that they should just put me in wherever they needed to even out the numbers, and i ended up sewing potholders for Heather, one of my fellow exec members at VMQG. this was handy, cause Heather's not super active on teh internetz, making her harder to stalk for inspiration, but since i've been to her house plenty of times for meetings, i knew what her kitchen looks like!




i knew that Heather likes greys and teals, hexies and polka dots, and i decided to combine all of those for her potholders.


no flash

i also knew that she loves 60s style, so i decided to incorporate that into the coasters by adding an embroidered mod girl to one of the potholders. i'm not super happy with how it turned out - i used more strands than i normally would, because i thought it would read better on the grey background, but i think it ended up looking a bit sloppy because of that. it might be just in my head though, because i HATE using more than two strands of embroidery floss!



the embroidery really didn't photograph that well, but Heather's pic portrays it a bit better.



it was funny, because as i was sewing the hexies together, i was frustrated because they didn't feel as modern and streamlined as i'd pictured them. once i had them all sewn together and the sides trimmed straight, it changed the look so much!


no flash

on both potholders, i machine quilted (since i had taken my machine out for that trip, i refused to be without it for as long as i was out there!) straight lines through the solid portions, and echoed the some of the hexies in the pieced portions.



i improv pieced the backs of the potholders using strips of the fabrics that i used for the hexies, and i loved how the quilting looked.




since i was late sending out the potholders, i decided to make something else to go along with them. coasters!!



look familiar? yes, these were the first hexie coasters! you saw the xmas ones that i wrote the tutorial for and gave away, and then the third set that i gave away in my birthday giveaway, finally i'm blogging the originals!



i pieced the fabric that i used for the backs, just to add little pops of colour.




i have to tell you guys, it was SO HARD to mail these off to Heather! i was so glad that they were going to someone who i was sure would like them, and also that i mailed them before Holly's potholders were lost.... i don't know that i'd have trusted them to the post office if i'd known that they'd lost hers! and i love that we use the coasters whenever Heather hosts our VMQG executive meetings!





i'm going to link this up with a few different linkies, now that i'm back, am slowly getting caught up, and have INTERNET again! i missed out on Sew modern Mondays at Canoe Ridge Creations, damn being on the west coast!

but i am linking up with SewHappyGeek's Manic Monday!


i'm also going to link up with Fabric Tuesdays over at Quilt Story , because this is a recent post, if not a recent project..... (because really, since when do i blog ANYTHING right after i make it? i'm not that organized folks!)

WIP Wednesday and Stress, Stress, Stress

i started to write a post, and it turned into a whole long page of ranting, and i thought, you guys don't want to read that, i don't even want to read it!


so short form (well, as short as i can get) - the grandma that i originally went out to visit in the hospital was doing well, but the day she was released, my other grandma fainted for the second time in 5 days, so we took her to the hospital. she shouldn't really be on her own at the moment, but the hospital sent her home after one night because they needed the bed and because my uncle was supposed to stay with her, but then he decided that she was fine and went back to work, so i've come back out here to stay with her for a few weeks. i'm the oldest in my family, and the oldest grandchild on both sides, so care often falls to me, and given my health stuff and my disability status, everything thinks i'm free to handle it, whether it's true or not!

my dad and i were supposed to come out together, but he was stuck way up north in a mining camp where the satellite phone costs $12.50 a minute for over a week, so i had to wait for him. the roads were terrible, it was storming, the friend he was with had to be taken by ambulance to the closest hospital, 10 or 15 hours away (very very remote!), andf it was generally a giant pain in the ass. they finally made it home on friday, thank goodness, and after a few days of scrambling to get things done, we left home and headed out east.

in addition to all of the above, i'd also had a plumbing nightmare which no one in the building seemed to know what to do about, and the guy who lives above me refused to stop using his kitchen pipes because it wasn't "his problem", so one day he ran his dishwasher and flooded my kitchen purposely. so then i had to empty out my entire kitchen before i left, including furniture, and find room elsewhere in my apartment for my refrigerator, because my kitchen floor has to all be pulled up, "biowashed", whatever that means, and relaid while i'm away.

ao basically, i've been super stressed for weeks now, and i'm massively behind on a million things. i had my Trim the Tree Swap ornaments finished before the deadline, but didn't manage to mail them until they were a week late. (but they're mailed now!! yay!!) i have the potholder swap between VMQG and FVMQG to start and finish asap, and i'm behind on my blocks for the Unscripted bee, as well as lots of other little projects (like Habitat, which is totally late). i haven't caught up on blogs in ages, and i have tons of e-mails and messages to respond to. i tried to switch over to the e-mail client on my laptop, since i have it with me here, but for some reason it'll receive e-mails but can't send them, but i'm going to ignore that issue for the night!




but would you like to see something i've been working on? since this is supposed to be WIP Wednesday, not Whining Wednesday?

hexies!!




i started working on these at the beginning of our trip, and by the time i arrived tonight, i had 35 done. slow, yes, but i slept a lot on the way out here too! i printed out a few sheets of hexagon templates before i left, (from the first link on this page) and have been puttering away. i'm not sure if i have too many or too few, but i'll start laying them out tomorrow and i'll figure that out then. for now, i'm just admiring the little pile i here beside me, with their cfrisp little folds and corners. aren't they pretty?


i'm linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced, and hopefully tommorrow the neightbours wifi will be strong enough to let me check out some of the others!