Thimbles

Well the hole in my finger is repairing rapidly.  I usually stop sewing before too much damage is done. So I got out my thimbles today. 

Mostly they are just decorative .  The one in the centre front is the only one I can use and the silver one is a child's thimble which I bought in an antique shop. Perhaps tonight I'll work using a thimble though it slows me down a lot.

It has been a perfect autumn day and the local primary school had its annual walkathon.  They go round and round a decent-sized block, so no roads have to be crossed, with the number of circuits depending on which grade you are in. They went right past my house and it wasn't long before I came to the conclusion that some of the staff and parents accompanying the children aren't used to distance walking !  The children were much fitter.

This week's bouquet of Hexies

This week's hexies were all made from the one piece of fabric, which had a rather overpowering pattern. So these hexie flowers are definitely not your modest little daisies

I'm glad I don't have any more scraps of this material.

This week I was reminiscing about the pen-pals we had in our youth, before the days of the internet and e-mails, and one of my hexie-swap bloggers came up with the term "fabric pen-pal" which I think is quite brilliant for describing the interaction between swappers of hexies or blocks.

I'll have to have a rest from hexies for a few days as I have a hole in the end of the middle finger of my right hand from pushing the needle through ! I don't get on very well with thimbles.  But when I start again it will be with some softer colours to balance out these bright hexies.

Nine Fat Quarters Hanging on a Tree , ......

Well, this random-looking patchwork throw should have been made with Fat Quarters but the deep blue piece with the cranes, which was the piece I most wanted to use, was a bit undernourished so the other pieces had to be cut down to match.

The nine pieces of equally sized fabric were stacked one on top of the other and all cut at the same time so that the square could be re-assembled in different colour combinations.
The final result is a bit under the size of 9 fat quarters.  I'm still trying to decide what colours to use for the borders.
And if one fat quarter should accidentally ............
(I hope you can guess what song was going through my mind when I was taking this photo.)

Adding to my Hexie Flower Garden

These are the most recent additions to my Hexie Flower Garden.

The two flowers on the right in the bottom row are from swap partners and the colours fit in beautifully. I have a favourite flower but it's always the last one that I made or received !


Now that I have a bit of a collection and am gradually adding to it  I'll be able to choose something from it each month for my swap partner in the Inchy Hexagon Flower Swap

A small gift or storage bag

I still like making small bags to use in place of wrapping paper for gifts.  This was the quickest one I've ever made.

Storage in the centre with triangular flaps each side covering other pockets.

 

A Hexagon Gift Bag

As a rest from making flowers for a hexie garden I used a friend's instructions to make a small hexagon gift bag.

And no, the stone in the garden is not a tombstone, which is how some friends describe it, but one of three stones which I call my miniature Stonehenge !

I was a bit disappointed as the casing for the cord is a bit bulky so you can't completely close the top,

The bag is lined so is nice for storing some jewelry, or embroidery threads - dozens of uses.

The little bag starts with a hexie flower - a centre and 6 petals.

Second row (pink)  - 6 five-sided petals

Third row (alternating plain pale blue and dark flower) -6 hexies again.

Final row (dark blue) - 6 four-sided pieces (half hexagons).

All the petals had 1" sides.

Completed with a bias-cut casing and threaded with a cord.

It's amazing how the camera never tells a lie. I didn't even spot the sloppy stitching until I looked at the images.  Obviously watching too much television while stitching this.