My turn to Say it with Flowers and a Giveaway!

Thanks to Mme Samm, and our cheerleader Carol, we are once again in the middle of a great blog hop. There have already been so many creative flower projects shown, with plenty more still to come.

I started planning this quilt back when I was making hexagon flowers but wasn't sure what to do with them. I wanted to play around a little with a more modern, minimalist design concept. This is the result:

I am really pleased with how it turned out. I freehand drew the wavy lines with chalk, then free-motion quilted them. In between I did what I like to call 'crossed stippling.' Proper stippling, of course, is supposed to be made up of lines that are evenly spaced, and therefore cannot cross over each other. This is practically impossible to do when your thread matches your background perfectly, so there are many, many cross-overs in this quilt.

Crossed Stippling!

 I did random circles in the center of each flower, so the petals are puffier than the rest of the quilt.

This was my first time piecing the back. Again, I tried to design something a little modern. Don't know if it qualifies or not, but I like it. I also pieced the batting and was pleasantly surprised by how easy that was, and how impossible it is to tell. I will be doing it again for sure.

And now for the giveaway. Those of you who read my blog may remember when I accidentally made three thread catchers instead of one. You can read all about that here.

Since I really only need one, and they are made of floral fabric, I set them aside to give away during this hop. I'll choose 2 lucky winners on June 5th. Just leave me a comment and make sure I can reach you if you're a winner. I will ship anywhere - and actually, I'm looking forward to maybe sending them somewhere far, far away!

Here is the rest of the schedule for the day. Happy hopping!

May 29^th

Kris Loves Fabric

Teatime Creations

~De Zondagssteek~

Ridge Top Quilts

Devoted Quilter

Mrs. Pickles Garden

Life In The Scrapatch

Englating

Why Knot Kwilt

Love It Sew It

Unfinished Object or Work in Progress?

Devotion for the Week...

How many UFOs (unfinished objects) do you have tucked away for someday, when you have more time or skill for them? I don't have many, but I do have these two wallhangings I started more than 5 years ago.

Blast Off! Designed by Debby Kratovil

Most blocks are finished, the last one is partially done and the backing fabric is still in my stash, uncut. I started this for Aiden and Zachary, but they're now much too old for the bug fabric I chose back then. One of these days I need to get back to work on this and get it put together for someone else's young child.

I nicknamed my Noah's Ark quilt "my 6 year quilt."

Noah's Ark, designed by Margaret Rolfe

I started it while pregnant with Aiden and I may have even finished the top before he arrived. The quilting took a lot longer. At the time I quilted everything by hand. I enjoy the hand work (which is why I love my hexies) and I love the look of hand quilting, but it takes a lot of time. In this case, years and years of time.

Of course, the quilt spent most of that time sitting in a bag in a closet while I worked on other, smaller projects that I could finish quickly. The Noah's Ark quilt measures 42" x 53" so even when I spent two or three evenings quilting, it was hard to see my progress. I'd go through spurts, working on it a lot for a few weeks, then putting it aside for months while doing other things. Eventually the quilt got finished, but only after I made a promise to myself to get it done by a certain date. Since then I've had many compliments on my 6 year quilt, certainly more than I could have received if I let it languish as a UFO in the closet.

I made progress on the quilt only when I changed it from a UFO in the closet to a WIP (work-in-progress), one that I was actively working on. As Christians, we are all God's WIPs. Paul told the Philippians he was confident "that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:6).

There are many areas where God is working on me. I have no problem admitting I'm not perfect, but that doesn't mean I always want to change. The ultimate goal for my life is for my character to match that of Jesus. That is more than a 6 year project! Thankfully, God doesn't get discouraged and put me in a closet while He works on other people.

I don't always like that nagging feeling of guilt when I've said or done something wrong. I don't like changing my attitudes or actions, but doing so will make me more like Jesus. Ignoring those promptings moves me out of the WIP category and into that of UFO, not because God has set me aside for someone else, but because I'm not working with Him, so no progress can be made.

How about you? Are you submitting to the Lord's molding of your character, allowing Him to show you what needs changing? It isn't easy, but following the will of God brings us closer to the 'finished product' that God has in mind when He looks at us. Though we won't be finished until 'the day of Christ Jesus,' I'd rather be a WIP, not a UFO.

WIP Wednesday - Piecing my Hexies

A couple of weeks ago, I won a copy of Mickey Depre's Pieced Hexies from Quiltmaker magazine's Quilty Pleasures blog. What with my ongoing hexie quilt, I couldn't wait for it to arrive. As soon as it did, I started in and now I've made 9 pieced hexagon flowers.

These 5 are finished

These 4 are basted. The one on the right is partially stitched together.

I had to make some adjustments to Mickey's instructions. Her patterns are for 1 1/2" hexies, but the ones I'm using are 7/8". It was definitely doable, but took a little figuring out each time I switched designs. I also altered some of the designs, creating my own riff on her originals. She's right when she says they are addicting! Of course, I feel that way about all the hexagons! I will be trying more pieced hexies, especially when I can move on to the larger size for another project.

For this quilt, I now have 23 finished flowers, including the pieced ones, which makes a nice little stack. I also have 26 basted, but not yet stitched. I need 56 full flowers, so that means I only have to cut and baste 7 more!

Since I'm so close to finishing the prep work for the flowers, I bought the blues last week. These two blues will be cut and basted into about 300 hexagons to surround all those flowers. So far I've done 30...still lots to go. I love how the hexagons cut from the floral print will all look a bit different since the scale of the print is much bigger than the hexagons.

I still have a few weeks before our trip to Florida this summer, so I have time to do lots of blue hexagons. It'll be great to take some sewing with me for downtime while we're gone.

I'm linking up with the Needle and Thread Network today.