Saturday, April 21, 2012

We were both up early this morning. Pat headed to his studio to work on some music and I started my laundry and cleaning. I had run out of laundry detergent earlier in the week and still had a couple of loads left. And I hadn’t been able to do my usual cleaning on Friday because Pat had a music session going on.

I made it up to my studio before noon and decided I’d take the first lesson in my April Block of the Month tutorial. I have seen bloggers that I follow talking about hexies and taking them along when they travel, but I never bothered to lookup what they were doing. This month’s lessons are all about hexagons (or hexies as they seem to be lovingly called) and they appear to be all hand stitched – at least this first block is.

I don’t have the store-bought hexagons so I had to make my own. Copy paper or a cereal box were suggested as mediums and I chose the cereal box because I thought it would hold the shape better. It does hold the shape well, but it was very difficult to baste through it when I was stitching the fabric down. I’m a little concerned about how hard it is going to be to remove those cereal box templates, but I’m not to that point yet.

I don’t think I’ll make many projects with hexagons but I think I can use the template when I quilt the Sudoku quilt. And I plan to use them on a card I’ll be making soon. It is fun to learn a new technique and then find ways to use it! Of course I’ll be watching for hexie patterns now that I know what they are.

After lunch we went out for groceries. It didn’t take long and we had enough afternoon left that we worked in the yard. The grass has been cut for the first time this year and I pulled a few (of many) weeds out of the beds. Lots more work to do but we ran out of energy. Good that we got it done today though because it looks like some rain is moving in.

My wrists, elbows and knees are so sore  from all my work that I’m not going to be able to do any more stitching tonight. I will use some of my arthritic cream and hope I can get back at it tomorrow.