Glorious Weekend!

What a difference a week makes! Last week my Japanese Maple was gorgeously red but November winds did blow and now I can count the leaves on the tree .... 8! While I will miss the deep dark red of Fall outside my kitchen window I am not sad as it is another fabulous sunny Sunday and still nice and mild. Woohoo!!
Another big woohoo to my guild London Friendship Quilter's Guild who put on a fabulous feature speaker and followup workshop the next day. They brought in Karen Howes from Faeries and Fibres blog fame.

 

Now, I've been a big fan of Karen's blog for a couple of years now, every since I became addicted to EPP/Hexies. So, I took a vacation day from work, struggled with the sewing machine lugging it down the stairs and out to the car, into the Church and setting up. My only complaint is that I forgot my camera, drats !!! It was all worth it as this was one of the best workshops I've attended! Karen was very well organized, understands the difference between talking and teaching, and had a knowledgeable assistant with her.  Her pre-class instructions were very specific and that was good as we were all well prepared for our hand work for the day.

We were given an accordion file folder with these 6 mini patterns, some fabric and some paper hexies to practice with. Karen works with ordinary paper, not card stock, this and her counter clockwise basting were definitely new to me. Once we accomplished the first(yellow) hexie flower we were on to making the individual hexies from "made" fabric (our homework). We started with the "Half & Half" hexie, then the "Candle" block, the "Whirligig",  the "Frame" and the "T" blocks and finished off with the "Narrow Star" hexie. Karen had a different method for fussy cutting, different from what I use for my Lucy Boston, so that was interesting to learn. All in all I was thrilled - absolutely thrilled to have gone, met Karen and accomplished so much. A day well worth the effort!

On the home front I haven't been a total slug - and I have managed to accomplish a few things. I got the borders on the Hanukkah wall hanging , so I'm almost ready to start quilting.

I think I'll try machine quilting this one, perhaps with invisible thread. Just have to decide on t he backing. I have the same fabric as the border only white with blue Stars of David, or I also have light blue with dark blue Dreidels, hmmmmm which to use ?
I also accomplished another Lucy Boston block ...

This one was a bit of a challenge. I had saved a scrap of the black with flowers from a previous project and got busy cutting the honeycombs before I realised I didn't have many/enough repeats. So I improvised ... I kinda like it, what do you think?

TTFN,