The Hexagon Quilt is Done!!

Here is my company while I work on finishing up the hexagon quilt!  I have had two kitties keeping me company almost all the time.  One did inhibit my progress a bit!!  But I got lots of purrs to compensate for sitting on the sewing machine.  This whole quilt was done on my FW.  I had ordered a new 1/4 inch foot from Amazon and it was perfect for this.  My FW, since being worked on by my Mennonite repair guy, is almost as fast as my Juki.

I got it finally all put together yesterday and it was really quick as everything fit nicely.

Here I have added the first border, a hand dyed blue just slightly darker than the triangles in the blue.

Finally got it all done this afternoon and quite pleased.  It measures 82 x 82.  I hadn't intended a square quilt but it just worked out that way with the seven rows of six blocks per row.  They are slightly wider than they are long.

Here is a closeup showing the whole border.  The outermost fabric was one I purchased on my cross country trip last summer and it was perfect for this quilt which called for a patterned border.

Not a very exciting bird, but a Ibis I encountered on a drive down to Ft. Fisher.  The background was a little different as you don't usually see the hunkering down in the woods!

Progress on the New Quilt from the August Cole Class and Egrets, Egrets, Egrets!

A blog would not be complete without the introductory sunset of the day.  This day was definitely a little different.

Here all the full sized blocks for the hexagon quilt are completed.  I haven't decided at this point whether to do the half blocks or just fill in with the lighter color I am using.

 This was testing the lighter color block and decided a definite no.

I decided on a different set from the one that August used, adding the darker blue triangles as well as the lighter color beige ones.  I had originally intended to do a pale yellow but my dyeing resulted in one that was far too bright and I didn't have enough of any of the lighter yellows.  I wasn't crazy about this beige batik so sacrificed it!!

I did the half blocks by literally doing half blocks.  It was a little tricky for the first couple of rows and I made sure I had both right and left hand sides by sewing two opposites at the same time when chaining.

I again tried the beige as the first order and didn't like it at all so found some blue that was close to the triangles, will add a thin strip of the turquoise and then this lovely batik which I had.  I knew I had to have  patterned fabric around the outside.  I think it will be about 82 x 86 when done.  Should be enough for a queen sized quilt!  Probably won't get it quilted until after GVQC quilt show though and am definitely contemplating having it long arm quilted unless I have a brainstorm soon!

The ladies nd I did some dyeing the other day.  They were working on doing batiks and I decided to just do some gradation dyeing.  This was a gradation of 7% Boysenberry with equal amounts of  Strong Orange added equally to each "pot".  I was a little unscientific this time and didn't weigh the dyes but measured so there was 1TBSP of the Boysenberry and 1 TBSP of the Strong Orange.  I figured the 1 TBSP was equivalent to about 15 grams of dye.

 I have seen very few birds this year but the other day I was surprised by an amazing sight.  There were between 40 and 50 Snowy Egrets crowded on the rocks next to the docks at Ft. Fisher all in their summer plummage.

 Here are just about 20 of them.  They sat there and then flew off a couple of times and then flew back gradually with even more birds constantly joining them.  I had never seen Egrets doing this!!

Here is a closeup of just one of them.