Where has the time gone?

I can't believe how long it has been since I last wrote a blog post, where has the time gone?

There really isn't a lot to say, I have been keeping busy with prepping and a little sewing of my EPP project.  And quite honestly, it isn't that exciting to write about.
I have 3 other EPP projects in the planning/prepping stages, and I haven't even come close to finishing my first project.  There are a lot more projects that I have in mind, but they haven't gotten to the stage where I'm ready to pick fabric and get started on them yet.

My first EPP project is a double ring flower quilt.  I reduced the number of flowers needed from 111 according to the pattern,  down to 44 for the size quilt I like to make.  When first calculating what I needed, I thought I needed 55 flowers, and cut enough pairs of fabric to make two flowers out of each pair, with one left over.  When I looked at my mock up in Electric Quilt and recounted, I realized I only needed 44 flowers.  After thinking about what I could do with enough hexies for 12 extra double ring flowers,  I decided to make a second quilt.  Since I was going to make a second quilt, I would need to cut more fabric, but instead of using 2 flowers with the same pair of fabrics, I decided to cut enough fabric so that each quilt used only 1 flower from each pair of fabric.
The second quilt is going to use diamonds for connecting pieces rather than hexies, so even though the flowers will be similar, the 2 quilts should look quite different.
I sewed the connecting hexies to one flower to see how that would look.  My plan is to use a variety of neutral hexies around the double flower.

Here is a picture I took with another flower laying next to this to get an idea on how it would look.

I want to wait until I get more of the flowers sewn before I start adding too many of the connector pieces, so I can get an idea of how I'm going to arrange the flowers, and try to not get the same connector pieces too close together.  But I think this is going to make a nice quilt.

Here are a few more of the double ring flowers I have gotten sewn.

  

 

I haven't sewn any flowers for the second quilt yet, although the fabric is cut, and I have basted some of the hexies getting them ready to sew.


After cutting the fabric for the flowers, I noticed that there is enough room on the scraps to get a half inch hexie out of some parts of it, and I just hate to waste fabric if there is something I can cut out of it.  So I found a pattern using 1/2" hexies called The Insanity Quilt.  There isn't enough "waste" to get all the hexies I need for Insanity, but since I cut my 1" hexies from Fat Quarters, there is plenty of fabric to cut my 1/2" hexies.  This quilt uses the hexies to make diamonds, so I need 8 hexies plus the center.  And there are 4 borders, the last one being a mish mash of different fabrics in no particular order.  One of the borders is the flower.  I need 158 diamonds, and 64 flowers for a total of 222.  I decided to use a different fabric for each of the diamonds and flowers, and use those fabric for the mish mash border.   I calculated I need about 8 hexies from each of the 222 fabric to have enough of them for the mish mash border.  So I will need to have 14 or 16 hexies out of each fabric.  I will have 88 fabrics from my two double ring flower quilts, and I have more than enough fabrics in my stash to come up with the other 134 fabrics needed.  The connectors in Insanity are going to be neutrals like my double ring flower, but I want/need more variety, so I will go through my stash and see what other fabrics I can use.

Here are the first few diamonds and a couple of flowers I sewed, just to see how they would look.

Well, that is about all that has been happening around here.  

Until next time... Happy Crafting!!!