Slow Stitching Sunday ... and Every Day!

It's been all Slow Stitching around here lately!

The holiday season is always a busy time with all the preparations and get-togethers with friends and family.  We barely got home from our visit to Carolina at Thanksgiving when it was time to start decorating for Christmas.  Over the past several weeks, we've enjoyed visits from several of our children and grandbabies - what a joy it is to hold them in our arms and see their sweet smiles!

Of course, those busy days usually mean very little time at the sewing machine, right?  I have managed a few stolen hours here and there, but not much - certainly not enough to share.  However, handwork has been happening!!!  

Here is my latest Patchwork of the Crosses block.  I love those bright oranges!  This one reminds me of fireflies and stars :)

Several other blocks are in various stages of completion as well.

As I have said before, having everything ready to stitch is key for me to move these little puppies along :)  One thing that is helping make them go faster is using the ClearStamp Template from The Quilter's Path.

I finally went by the Quilter's Path and picked up the ink pad to go with the templates which I purchased quite a while back.  In addition to the 1" Honeycomb stamp, the package includes a 1" square and 1" Half Square template.  So far, I've only used the Honeycomb template, but the others will come in handy when I start joining the blocks together.

I love using this stamp!  It is flexible and you can clearly see where the design will end up on your patch.  It has two lines that stamp onto the back of your fabric, the stitching line and the 1/4" seam allowance cutting line .....

You can stamp a lot of patches very quickly!

It sure beats drawing around templates over and over :)

Can you believe this is the back of that gorgeous orange????

I've also started work on Millefiori.  I really struggled with fabrics for this project, even though I have tons of fabrics that lend themselves to kaleidoscopes very nicely.  I had three issues to address while picking my fabrics:

- I wanted to keep this first month's rosette in the yellow/orange/pink ranges, and I discovered that my "wild" fabrics are limited in that color range - oops!  

- I had to be sure there was enough of the chosen fabrics to make the needed number of motifs.  For the center I only needed six of each motif, but going forward the numbers multiply.

- I had to make sure I had enough variety to put together each of the rounds in the Rosette to give it a lot of interest and value.  I was surprised at the number of fabrics in my stash that I thought would be perfect for this Rosette, but which didn't work at all with my Center block!   

I finally chose this wonderful Australian print - very aboriginal and funky :)

and it made this very interesting Center for my Rosette #1 ....

This is an english paper-piecing QAL with Katja's Quilt Shoppe.  Katja uses glue instead of baste prepping the pieces for each block.  I love the simplicity of it, but I'm not happy with the way I can see each of my stitches in the final block.  I'm hoping that eases when I take the templates out.

 The intricacy of each of Katja's hexagons is quite remarkable, and  she puts them together to make the most marvelous medallions!

Photo from The New Hexagon - Millefiori Quilt-Along on Facebook

We are working from her book, The New Hexagon.

See it HERE

I thoroughly enjoyed stitching on these hand projects today while watching my Carolina Panthers win their first NFL Playoff game!

We Panther fans feel like we won the lottery or something, since our team had only 7 regular season wins, while all the other teams in the Playoffs have at least 11.  We'll take it though and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts :)

Have a lovely Sunday my friends!!!!

Linking up with Design Wall Monday
WIPs Be Gone & Kathy's Quilts

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

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