It's been a while...

 Summer has been crazy busy - regular summer busy and our new retirement busy - which includes travel! 

In my last post, I showed the quilt I made for a wedding gift to a very special couple. We have known the bride since she was born and her parents even longer! I asked for help naming the quilt as I was having difficulty coming up with a name that worked for me. After reading many suggestions, both here and social media, as well as asking my daughters, I came up with the perfect name (in my opinion). I finally named it 'Love Grows'! Here is a picture taken on top of Mt Washington!

It was so windy! This is the best of several attempts but it was fun trying! 

(more pictures here.)

The finished size is 63" x 73". 

Also in previous posts, I showed you the process of designing and piecing a baby quilt for another special couple. I have also know mama since birth and her parents longer. Our youngest daughter was raised with these 2 girls! Since I was going to miss the baby shower (due to retirement travel), I desperately tried to get this finished before leaving. I managed to finished everything except hand stitching the binding so it came with so I could finish during the car ride. Here are pictures taken on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. 

I quilted this with several different thread colors. I stitched spirals in the sun and straight line rays. The mountains have straight lines following the peaks and the trees are quilted with triangles. The finished size is 36" x 42". 

I'm linking to Off the Wall Friday @ Creations-Quilts, Art, Whatever, Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop @Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Wednesday Wait Loss @the inquiring quilter

I also brought some EPP tumblers on our car trip and I managed to finish the last 36 as well as start randomly sewing them together in rows of 10. 

I'm not sure what the layout will be but at least I got a start on some rows. I can always make them longer. I have 300 tumblers.

My final project for the car ride was to work on an old UFO from my cross stitch days. I was inspired to pull this project out when I saw Annie's @Annie's Musings, cross stitch project that she recently started again. I drew up this pattern from a picture I took after we put on the addition to our house! I got bored with it while filling in the sky/background and I haven't worked on it in years!

This is what it looked/looks like!

Before

After

I have put in a few more rows since being home! Maybe this will get finished after all! I still have all the details/outlines to do after the background is done!

PROGRESS!

I will leave the rest of the updates for another post as this has gotten quite long. if you are interested in my vacation pictures you can see them on my instagram or facebook accounts.  Thanks if you have read to the end! 

Did you jump on the bandwagon?

I mean the EPP hexagon bandwagon? 

I searched back on my blog to try to find out when I jumped on started my hexagon quilt with no luck. 

The earliest picture I found dates back to May 5, 2011 and there were quite a few made then. However, I didn't have any plan in mind on how or what I would do with them. I had no clue what I was getting myself into how long this process would take.

The next post was on February 8, 2012 where I had made my hexagons into flowers. I remember that my original plan was not to do flowers but somewhere along the path I decided to make them into simple flowers. 

Then on March 17, 2013, it seems as if I had a plan to alternate scrappy colored flowers with white flowers with a colored center. 

 Notice that I only had one post per year in 2011 & 2012. I really didn't work on hexagons on a regular basis...just when I needed a portable project. 

 By July 31, 2013, I had quite a bit done but still much more to do. 

With the pattern I choose, I needed a LOT of filler pieces but by 

February 17, 2014, I was on my way to putting the pieces together! 

I could see a dim light at the end of the tunnel and I was determined to work harder on getting it done.

By April 18, 2014, I had the top pieced but it needed a border...so I started making more white hexagons.

Then I decided I wanted the top and bottom of the quilt to be straight rather than the zagged edge you get with hexagons. 

I needed to make half hexagons to fill in. 

I am so happy to show you my finished quilt!

After many, many hours of hand piecing work, it is finished!!!

The binding was done using this method that I found on Pinterest. 

It does require you to make more hexagons to fit the outline of your top but it is worth it! I love how it turned out!

The back is a floral print from my stash. The binding hexagons are all from the same fabric from my stash.

I machine straight lined quilted around the scrappy flowers and around the centers of the white flowers. I FMQ petals in the scrappy flowers. 

(the only machine work on this quilt) 

Pocketful of Posies!

I am so stinking happy with this quilt! 

I am proud that I persevered and did not give up in the process...

and it was a long process!