Happy New Year to All My Blogger Friends and Readers!!

We did not escape the bad east coast weather this time!!  We  have been wintering down here in southern coastal North Carolina for nine years and this is a first for us.  Lots of ice still and it has been sunny all day but the temps are barely above freezing even now in the mid-afternoon.  They have been going into the teens at night and will for the rest of the week.  We have had a few really cold days before but not for two weeks running at this early in the season!!  All this ice is of course covered with snow on the streets in the land of no snow plows or even salt trucks!!  

Doesn't seem right to have palm trees covered in ice and snow!!

This has given me lots of opportunity to work on the "quilt from hell" that I am determined to finish.  The sad part is that I have ideas of how to do different ones but no way would I have the patience to ever do this quilt again.  Usually I can finish a quilt top in a week or two, even fairly complex ones.  At the rate I am going on this one, it will be over a month at least just to get it pieced.  So it will only be done once.  This is a single motif sewn together.  It was a  lot easier to put together than I thought it would be, just tedious but perfect for doing on my Featherweight.  

Hint:  Do all  your sewing from the Snail Trail side so that you can match those corners.  It is okay if you cut a little of the corner off but not good if you make the seam to slim.  This also goes for when you are attaching each set of triangles while making the Snail Trail block.

One whole row is complete here.  Here are my hints for putting it together to this stage:

I decided to take my first shot at putting one of the motifs together as I had dreaded this step.  I think alternating the different parts of putting this quilt together makes it easier going as even with the different fabrics, all the trimming gets a bit tedious -- the reason I don't like making quilts with half square triangles.  So here was my approach as there were few if any hints in the pattern just a couple of pictures!

1.  Sew all the hexagons together first sewing two triangles and then adding the third.  Press away from the middle triangle.  Sew two sections together to form a hexagon.  Sew to the end -- don't leave any 1/4 inch allowance.  Press the middle seam open and press the hexagon.

2.  Put the motif (a hexagon center with the surrounding pieces) on your design wall to make sure all are facing in the right direction.  Carefully take off the Snails Trail blocks with the triangle next to it making sure triangle in same place on each block.  Take to the machine and make a light mark a 1/4 inch in on each end of the square and then sew each triangle to the Snail's Trail block starting a quarter inch in (and backstitching) and going to within 1/4 inch at the end.  Do this for all the blocks for a whole motif (one whole motif per row).  This will be six Snails Trail blocks for a whole hexagon. Finger press toward the triangle.   

3. Here comes the tricky part.  I thought this would be more difficult than it was.  I first pinned a Snail Trail block with its attached triangle to one of the triangles in the hexagon.  I pinned at either end from seam to seam making sure I didn't catch any of the previous seam.  I then stitched this from one end to the other.  I then did the same thing with a second Snail Trail block right next to this first block doing the same thing.  then I sewed the seam between the two blocks, again making sure not to catch any of the previous seams while sewing, backstitching at the beginning and end of each seam.  This was laborious but not difficult as it turns out if the blocks and hexagons are all the right size!!  I then pressed it pressing the hexagon seams out.  


The tedious part of all this  is constant checking to make sure the arms of the Snail's Trail blocks are all going in the proper direction. I learned this the hard way!!

Well, I did have to spend one whole day of sewing undoing three of the four blocks that I  had sewn together in the above picture.  Funny how seeing the lined up showed up the errors easily!!  Can you find the "bad" blocks.  It was a pain to take them apart because of the backstitching but was easy to reassemble because of the no overlap of seams.

Here you can see the second full row (not sewn together yet) and the intermediate row.  There are four of the big rows and three of the intermediate ones.  I am going to finish off the intermediate rows and the tops and bottoms of the big rows differently than she does.  It will be a little awkward looking but I do not want to lop off any of the Snail Trail's blocks.  I think it will provide somewhat of a tan border beginning as well.  I am going to add even more tan in the border I believe as I think it needs to be calmed down a bit.  We shall see!!

Before I make any more blocks, it is back to cutting which took days before.  I am completely out of the lighter values in all sizes!