In a rush...

Thank you for the thoughtful comments about my aunt. I'm trying my darndest to get the quilt finished this weekend so I can ship it off on Monday.

So far, so good -- the top has met the approval of my inspector, so I'm on to basting!

If it ain't one thing, it's another...

I'm pretty sure in the grand scheme of things that an aunt in hospice trumps babies that aren't arriving for another two months. So we've had a change of schedule.

I'm not sure how long she'll be able to use it, or even if she'll be able to appreciate it, but once again my reaction to the news of sickness is to sew, so I'm making a quilt.

It's pretty much all I can do from far away.

Messin' me up...

What is wrong with this picture?

March in Chicago is supposed to be MISERABLE.

We are supposed to spend March battling 50mph winds, sleet stinging our faces, and wrestling inside-out umbrellas. We're supposed to be wearing two pair of long underwear to the St. Patrick's Day Parade. It's supposed to be rain one day, snow the next, with no expectations of seeing the sun until mid-April if we're lucky. It's supposed to be 30 days of a damp, cheerless existence, huddled under blankets on the sofa.

Instead, it's glorious. And HOT. My daffodils have been in bloom for a week, and the lilac is budding out. And I had some guy dressed like a leprechaun on Spring Break throwing up green beer on his flip-flops and my front lawn on Saturday afternoon (hey, I live in the city).

March is also the month when I start quilting all of those tops I've made since Christmas, and now? I have gardening to do. And bikes to ride, and runs to take along the lakefront. Because in spite of the reports that these milder temperatures are here to stay, I'm not totally convinced that there isn't a blizzard lurking somewhere in Canada, just waiting for us to let our guard down completely and dump a foot of snow on next week's deck party. As such, I'm treating each freakishly warm day as a gift from Mother Nature, abandoning my sewing machine and using every free moment to take advantage of Summer in March.

It's really messed my project schedule up, but I'm OK with it.

A few random things...

This hexagon top is going very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that I'm afraid it's going to become a UFO.

In an effort to mix it up a little, I pulled out my "Not So Plain Spoken" top and laid it out to measure for the backing. But I didn't make much progress there either, as you can see.

Interesting article for all of you who are into Pintrest. I'd include a quote from her original blog post, but that's copyright infringement, so you'll just have to go read it yourself.

I am still singing "Honeycomb" all day and night.

The web design class I'm taking just made the turn this weekend from "isn't HTML fun?" to "how the hell am I ever going to wrap my head around this?" Shades of junior year Programming 101, which I dropped at the last minute because -- wait for it -- I couldn't wrap my head around it.

I happened to be at Jacquie's the day her preview copy of "Quilting Modern" arrived. Gotta tell you, this book is gorgeous (and at 176 pages, surprisingly heavy!), filled with beautiful photographs and stunning quilts. It even smelled good in that new-book-fresh-ink kind of way.  I had it on pre-order even before I saw it in person, and I can hardly wait to get my copy!

Happy Monday, and happy quilting!

On to the next...

For my next project, the recipient requested purple and pink, with emphasis on the purple. I've seen a lot of cute hexagon quilts in the blogosphere lately, and when Jacquie posted her nifty tutorial a couple weeks ago, I knew it was perfect timing to start this quilt and learn a new technique. So I sliced up a whole bunch of purples and pinks from my stash and made a pilgrimage to the Hexagon Whisperer herself.

I probably could have figured this out on my own, but Jacquie is a great teacher and made it SO easy to understand, it saved much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair to have her show me in person instead. My hair dresser and dentist are eternally grateful.

It doesn't go very quickly (this coming from someone who thrives on strip sets, so "quick" is relative), but getting those first seams lined up and laying flat is incredibly rewarding. After avoiding hexagons for years because they appeared too labor intensive, this kind of feels like magic!

I echo Jacquie's advice on adding one hexagon at a time until you feel really comfortable with the process. Sewing two full columns together isn't horribly difficult, but it creates more room for error.  I'll be ripping out at least part of the top column I added to fix some puckers that couldn't be fought off with the iron.

One big downside:  I can't get Jimmie Rodger's "Honeycomb" out of my head. Been singing it all week, and don't think it's going to go away until I'm done.

Welcome to my madness!