Four til ten - March

Thursday evening was our 4pm til 10pm sewing group.  I really look forward to it.  It's nice to enjoy the company of a group of women with a shared interest and to have a good period of un-interrupted sewing time.

Plus, I get to compare blocks with my "10 year project" companion, Alison. She was making a miniature of our hexagon star block - in 1/4" hexagons.  They were insanely tiny.

I so much enjoy choosing colours from my fabric stash that I've tended to make the coloured centres of the blocks and not made many of the neutral background hexagons.  I decided I'd spend the evening building up my stock of background hexagons.  It doesn't seem such a boring task when there's friendly banter going on.

American Pie - completed

I have finally completed the "American Pie" quilt for my young niece.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

I took this photo on my phone so it isn't the best.

A previous 10 year project

I've started a 10 year project once before!  It was one of the first things I started sewing.  I saw a hexagon quilt on a bed at Port Arthur, Tasmania, about 15 years ago and it stuck in my mind.  I had no idea how to go about it but found a hexagon shape on the internet and printed it and photocopied it .. again.. and again... and again.  I cut out hexagons and stitched them to my cut out papers.  Eventually I had a box full of them but no idea where to go with it next.

I stitched some into a couple of rings and joined the rings by an extra row of hexagons.  So now I had a few joined together rings with holes in the middle.  I asked advice from Corliss at Threadbear in Castlemaine and decided on the suggestion of a plain centre appliqued in.

It is almost complete - just a corner section to go plus a few centres to stitch.

Other works in progress

I much prefer hand stitching to sewing on a sewing machine.  Here are another couple of works in progress - all done by hand. 

First, a quilt for my 8 year old niece.  I had it machine quilted by Margaret at the Quilt Station in Elphinstone.  Now there is only the binding to stitch on.:

The pattern is called American Pie

While the quilt above was being machine quilted I started a quilt for niece #2 :

Don't know what this is called!