Squeezing in sewing on Design Wall Monday

Oh my goodness last week was soooo busy - shopping, painting, cleaning and more painting. If we had gotten finished with all we had planned I'd be feeling better...but there is still a lot to do. I did find a little time to squeeze in a tiny bit of sewing.

And I do mean a tiny bit of sewing because the only part of any block here that is sewn together is 3 triangles of ONE hexagon. I've been wanting to make a quilt with hexagons for a while and I started with a jelly roll of fall fabrics that I found in my stash. I've misplaced the tag for this jelly roll but it is interesting that the entire collection reads as darks. I've added in some lighter pieces from my stash and then I got the idea to add hexagons that were just one fabric. Like this piece...

and this piece...

and the piece de resistance.... chickens in fall colors!

These are big hexagons,they measure about 8 1/2 inches. I cut them out with my new Hex and More ruler... you can see it here. I'm really impressed with this ruler as you can cut the triangle pieces that make up a larger hexagon, as well as a full hexagon with the same ruler.

As you can see I'm still stuck in a Fall palette. I found several large cuts of pretty leafy Fall fabrics in my stash... some older Hoffman's with gold accents,some Robert Kaufmann and assorted other designers. I can't remember on whose blog I saw a similar arrangement of pieced and unpieced hexagons but it was very cool. I think I can arrange my full hexagons in such a way that I won't have to do any inset seams. Now all I need is to find some more time to sew!

Well my son didn't get moved into his house yet, but he's okay with it. The painting of one room somehow morphed into the painting of all the woodwork in the house. I'm not sure how that happened but I think it might have been me who said "those blue walls would look great with white baseboards." What was I thinking??? The walls do look great but it turned out to be a whole lot of work.

First the baseboards needed to be sealed and primed. I found a water based primer for this (thanks Pinterest) and started with one coat of primer followed by a coat of semi-gloss. Good but not good enough. So another coat of semi-gloss.... and then is still needed another coat. Looks great but boy does it take time. We did limit ourselves to just baseboards and door trim, however this house has LOTS of baseboards and door trim. There is a small area in the center of the house, about 8 foot square and in this area are SIX door openings that are trimmed all the way around - door to the kitchen, door to the attic, bedroom door, another bedroom door, closet door and bathroom door. When I started in this area I realized that 2 coats of primer might enable me to do only one coat of semi-gloss. The jury is still out on this. It looks pretty good with one coat of semi-gloss but there is still that little nagging voice saying two coats would look even better. I wish that little voice would shut his trap because my arms and knees are aching. My son has to go back to work today and I'm taking the day off. I thinks some quality time in my sewing room will be quite enjoyable and I won't have to clean paint from under my fingernails.

Happy stitching-
carol fun