You can buy pre-cut hexagons papers for English Paper Piecing from a number of sources. You can get them from Paper Pieces on the web. You can buy them at your local quilt store, the Pennington Quilt Works in my case, in bags of varying amounts. While paper piecing goes more quickly to have someone do this work of making paper pieces for you in advance, I think it is a waste of money. It is so easy to “roll your own”. Ummmm, I mean is that it is so easy to CUT your own, but being a child of the sixties I couldn’t resist the phraseology.

I like my paper pieces firm enough to offer support to my fabric, yet flexible enough for easy bending when it is time to join larger shapes or rows together. Therefore, I use a 20 pound all purpose office supply paper that I obtain from Staples. I may try a heavier paper at some time, but I am satisfied with 20 pound paper currently. The pre-cut manufactured papers I have tried are quite a bit heavier, and I find that they are not as easy to bend. Therefore, they are not as comfortable to work with.

I found a nice pdf file for cutting one inch hexagons at the Texas Freckles web site. I am offering a link to the main page of the web site. I urge you to explore the entire site, and then click on “Downloads and Patterns” to find the hexagon pdf. Since I have printed out many pages of hexagons using this pdf, the least I can do is encourage traffic to the site rather than just a link to the pdf file.

Ordinarily I print my hexagon shapes on blank paper. But today I got the brilliant idea of recycling my daily todo list from my husband. I am retired and my husband still works part time. He enjoys a clean and tidy house, whereas I simply to do not care about such things. I don’t even SEE the dirt and clutter around me. I’ve always been that way, and I am unashamed, might I say even proud? But I am clearly the Oscar to my husband’s Felix. Rather than have this become a bone of contention, we have set up a routine whereby I receive a list of things to do each day he is at work at least. I have the pleasure of checking off the completed items, and my husband has the pleasure of having the tasks completed that might otherwise have gone undone. Now, before anyone comments to offer sympathy because my husband provides me with a daily todo list, let me make it clear that he does MORE than his share of housework. I find the use of the todo list to be mutually beneficial. I take pleasure in checking things off, and I am pleased that he makes his needs known in a way that works for both of us. That is far superior to having him let his disappointment over my substandard housekeeping fester. I’m clearly the one with the problem, not him. So it’s all good.

Here is the pdf file from Texas Freckles printed on the first page of my todo list from Tuesday.

Here are the hexagons cut out and ready to use for basting.

Here the hexagons are pinned…

basted…

trimmed…

and finally inserted into a piece currently in process.

Above is a screenshot of the restoration of files from Crash Plan Central to my late 2008 Macbook Aluminum Body laptop. I had taken said laptop into the the Apple Store last week after it had failed to reboot following a simple “update all” in the App Store. I was doing those updates in preparation for upgrading to Yosemite. The Genius that helped me had to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Mavericks. I took it home and upgraded to Yosemite without a hitch, but all of my data was gone. I had no recent Time Machine backup. I thought I was out of luck, but then I remembered my Crash Plan subscription. In fairness I have to point out that I never bothered much with backup on the laptop because it was a secondary device, and anything of real importance was in Dropbox. If this restore doesn’t work I will not have lost much other than a second Aperture library and some miscellaneous files scattered across the hard drive outside of the Dropbox folder.

I’m getting ready for my setup session of my “One-to-One” subscription, which I ordered as part of my new Macbook Pro purchase. I intend to take the old Macbook in and have them use it to set up the new machine. once I get the files restored from Crash Plan I should be good to go.

You are probably thinking that this blog post is off topic, but it really isn’t. I’ll explain. While this blog is about my second act in fiber arts, and while this post has to do with technology, my technology purchases influence how much money I can afford to spend on my quilting habit. This post is as much about Quiltcon 2015, and my conflicts over attending, as it is about the Macbook Pro purchase.

I was sitting on the fence about whether or not I would attend Quiltcon 2015. I really wanted to go, but I had reservations about it from the start. I booked a room for it even before registration opened in June. After seeing the price for the room, and estimating the other expenses involved I figured that Quiltcon 2015 would set me back at least $2,000 if I decided to attend. One of the reasons this was going to cost me so much is that I didn’t know anyone to share a room with, so the hotel was going to be a major expense.

I also had some fears of being a social wallflower since I don’t know people on the web yet to meet up with in Austin. I also have not broken the ice yet with the members of the local guild who might be attending. As a result of that I wasn’t sure that I would have people to hang out with. I’m actually pretty independent, having attended Photoshop World on my own without knowing a soul, but it can be lonely to be at a convention on your own, and it’s more fun if you can share the experience with others.

A couple days after registration opened for Quiltcon 2015 I decided to bite the bullet and just go ahead and register even though it would be a major expense, and I might be alone. I logged in, filled my cart with lectures, and went to pay. There was a glitch with my credit card. I could have whipped out another card and paid, but I took it as some sort of a sign. I logged out, and sat on the idea. That was in June. I’ve been sitting on the idea for four months now. Between now and June I’ve been back and forth a few times about whether I should go or not.

At the last CJMQG meeting someone mentioned that air fares to Austin are very good right now. I checked them out and decided to register for the event before getting the air fare. I started to register, but it was the day of the Apple event where they would be presenting the new retina display 27 inch iMac, and I wanted to see the live stream of the event, and the time for event was approaching. So I waited.

Coming away from the Apple live stream I was very conflicted about where my money was going to need to go in the next couple of years in terms of my upgrade cycles for Apple devices. I have an iPhone, an iPad, a notebook, and a desktop to think about. The retina display iMac was looking very tempting, but it had an entry price of $2,400, which was just about what I expected to drop on Quiltcon 2015 if I went.

I had some serious thinking to do.

In the meantime I started to get my laptop ready for Yosemite. In the process my laptop refused to boot up from an “update all” of standard minor apps before the big OS upgrade. I scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar of my local Apple store for my 5 1/2 year old aluminum body macbook. They tried to repair my hard drive first and boot it up with the contents intact. That didn’t work. They then reformatted my hard drive and installed Mavericks. It came up and I was told that I could install Yosemite at home. If the unit did not boot up that would mean that my hard drive had failed and would need replacement. If it booted back up it was good for now, and the drive could be replaced at a future date if necessary. However, I’d need to get it from Crucial, or New Egg or Radio Shack because the computer is so old that Apple no longer provides parts for it. They don’t provide parts for units over six years old, and even though I had the laptop since Spring 2009, it was a late 2008 unit, making it over six years old.

The really good news is that Apple charged me nothing to scan my drive, reformat it, and install Mavericks even though my laptop was no longer under Apple Care. Since The things that they did for me fell under the category of diagnostics, and since I hadn’t needed any hardware replacements there was no charge to me. (Well, if i had needed hardware replacements I would have been out of luck because of the age of my unit, so I was really lucky.)

While I was at the Apple Store I looked at the new retina display iMac. It is beautiful, but I am not sure that I need it. I looked at the retina display Macbook Pro units, and they are nice too, but I don’t think I need one of those either. I took a fresh look at the lowly 13 inch Macbook Pro with the mechanical hard drive and the Optical Drive. It’s the only notebook left in the line that can accommodate an optical disk without an external drive attached.

I formulated an upgrade plan right then and there. I would max out the lowly Macbook Pro with non-retina display in every way possible… processor, ram, hard drive. I would make it my primary machine. I would hook it up to my 3 1/2 year old iMac when I want a larger display. I would downgrade my desktop unit to the status of an external monitor and file backup system. Two years later I would revisit the idea of a retina display iMac, but I would probably get a non-retina display iMac, and the cycle would be in place where I would upgrade my laptop and desktop using a four year replacement cycle. Or I would forgo a desktop altogether and get a cinema display when the desktop finally died and upgrade the laptop every three years.

Minimally, I would not need to think about a retina display again for another two years, and that would be a relief.

I had my plan formulated. If I did not attend Quiltcon 2015,  I could just move forward with the plan because I had enough money saved for the new laptop. I figured I would wait until Saturday to make a final decision about Quiltcon because I would be spending the day at the Pennington Farmers Market with members of the CJMQG. I’d have a chance to speak with the president of the guild about Quiltcon. As it turned out I had a chance to speak with a few other women about Quiltcon too. What I discovered is that the workshops and lectures are mostly filled at this point. There are some lectures still available in the evening, but many people will be out socializing at that time, and I will miss out on a lot of social aspects of the convention if I register for the evening workshops that area still available.

So the decision about Quiltcon was made for me by my own procrastination in registering. I don’t regret it though. I remember actually feeling relieved when I realized that I shouldn’t go to Quiltcon this year. It’s the right thing. The first time I attend Quiltcon I should be looking forward to meeting people I’ve met on the web through my blogging activities. I hope that will be the case for the next Quiltcon.

The maxed out Macbook Pro is ordered, and I am glad. I am having it delivered to the Lawrenceville Apple Store where I will pick it up on November 6th. I ordered a year of one-on-one instruction for the first time ever. I’m really looking forward to learning as much as possible from the people at the Lawrenceville Apple Store. For the first time ever I live close enough to an Apple store to take advantage of “One-toOne”.

This week I finished adding the outer border of burgundy flowers.  Here is what it looked like before the hunter green hexagons were added in.

Last week I showed sample fabrics from the fat quarter bundle that I ordered from Keepsake Quilting. The medley of fabrics is called “Embracing Horses Quilt Fabric Medley” and was created by Laurel Burch. I used the images posted on the Keepsake Quilting web site when I showed the fabrics last week. The fabrics look really nice in those photographs.

The fat quarter bundle arrived this week, and I was not disappointed when I saw the fabrics in real life. The scale of the patterns was a little smaller than I expected, but I was very happy with what I saw. I am hoping to use the largest scale horse pattern as the back of this quilt sample. It doesn’t have any red in it, but i think it will harmonize very nicely with the crimson binding I am planning on using.

I’m going to show each of these fabrics below using my quilt sample piece as a backdrop. I’ll start with the largest scale horse design. For a sense of scale bear in mind that the edge of a hexagon shape is one inch.

I do think that some fussy cutting may be in order.

I Joined the two square units as pictured below.

I had planned to create two additional units of the same type, but then I realized that it would be easier to just add the individual flowers in rows to flesh out the intended design. That is what I did.

The central design is complete and all that remains is to finish the outer border of burgundy flowers, with single hunter green hexagons between the flowers. I’ll then need to finish off the edge from there. Currently the plan is to use the crimson fabric to fill in with the single hexagons necessary to finish off the border. I am planning to bind this piece using a bias binding. I will cut away half of the hexagons along the borders before binding. I plan to document that process well to create a binding tutorial for the half hexagon finish technique which I intend to use for the Diamond Quilt, and also the Large Batik Flower Garden Quilt.

I need eleven additional burgundy flowers to flesh out the edge. It is my goal to have the edge finished this week and be prepared to begin basting this sample piece the next week. I am currently estimating the finished size of this piece at 35 inches by 32 inches. If I want to make it larger I could end up adding additional rows of crimson hexagons to the border. I need to research baby quilt sizes in order to come up with an appropriate finished size.

Recently I got a catalogue in the mail from a company called Keepsake Quilting. Most of the catalogue was full of kits. I don’t use kits, and these were not particularly to my liking anyway. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the fabric selections until I came across a collection of fabrics that really spoke to me. It is the “Embracing Horses Quilt Fabric Medley“.  I ordered the fat quarter collection to get a good look at all six of the fabrics, but I particularly like the large print pictured above, and I think it would make a really nice backing for this sample piece. After I have had a chance to look at the fabric up close I will probably order a few yards of it.

Pictured below are the other fabrics in the medley.

Will these birds be small enough to fussy cut?

What a nice texture.

Here is another great texture.

This fabric is a nice complement to the larger horse print, as is the fabric below.

These images and colors really speak to me. The colors fit in with my current color pallet and will expand it slightly. I’m not sure what I will end up doing with all of these fabrics, but once I get my hands on them I think I am going to have to order yards of each of them. Sometimes you see something that you know you have to have. I think I will need to have these.

I may even end up piecing something from this collection in a modern fashion for the back of the large Batik Flower Garden Quilt to make that quilt an interesting reversible piece.

Tuesday night was the monthly meeting of the Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild. I have been a member now since January. I really enjoy the meetings. At the CJMQG they do more than just “Show and Tell”. There’s something interesting each month. This month they showed us the many baby quilts that had been created as a charitable endeavor by the CJMQG members. Many members gave of their time to make this a success. I wish I had taken a photograph of the pile of quilts that were on the table after they had all been displayed. The quilts were being tossed onto the table one after the other so we could see then, and by the time they were all out, the pile was huge.

At the end of the meeting on Tuesday there was a fabric exchange. Members were encouraged to bring fabrics that they would like to either exchange or sell outright. One of the members came prepared with her fat quarters wrapped around sheets of cardboard for easy viewing by flipping through the display in the box she brought with her. She had her sales pitch ready too, and I got an opportunity to be the first to view her wares, and hear her pitch, even before the meeting started. She was offering her fat quarters for a dollar a piece. To stimulate sales she was giving away a free chocolate bar with every five dollar purchase.

I initially thought I would forgo the chocolate and get just three fabrics, but then I decided to look more closely and found two more items. I would have photographed the chocolate bar, but it is now long gone, having been shared with my husband who is kind enough to drive me to and from my guild meetings because I no longer drive at night.

I bought five pieces of approximately fat quarter size, so I got these fabrics at the price of $4.00 a yard. I’ll post close ups of the individual fabrics with comments below.

This fabric doesn’t look as if it will lend itself to being cut into one inch hexagon shapes, which is what I like to do, but it might surprise me. I may have to find other plans for it. I will eventually break free of my hexagonal box. It is only a matter of time. Maybe I will save it for then. When I was looking at the fabrics in the box I mentioned to the woman offering them that some of them might prompt me to invest in a collection of solids to coordinate with them. That would be false economy. This might be just such a print.

I’m pretty excited about this print because it will coordinate perfectly with the collection of scraps that I bought at the Pennington Quilt Works sale during the summer. At that time I bought a five dollar bag crammed full of scraps. Since then I have basted those scraps into hexagons and have a nice sized bowl that I am going to plan a project around. This fabric could easily be a unifying element in that project, especially if I get some solids to coordinate with it.

The next three fabrics are actually much more green than they appear below. They are on the yellow side of green for sure, but here they look much more yellow here than they really are. I may plan something that will involve all three of these fabrics. I may even combine them with some other greenish hexagons I have already basted.

The fabric directly above is the first one I focused on when I flipped through the sale box. I had to have the chicken tracks if nothing else. Then I found two fabrics that looked as if they would coordinate with it. Then my lust for chocolate took over.

There was a quilt challenge going on recently called “The Modern Solids Challenge”. A number of fantastic and well known quilters were selected to participate in the challenge.  I enjoyed seeing the quilts that these talented individuals made using the same box of Modern Solids. Today I cast my vote in the challenge for the quilt created by Lee from Freshly Pieced.

(photograph from the Freshly Pieced web site)

 You can see her blog entry about her quilt here where you will find more pictures including a nice photograph of the Modern Solids box, which is no longer available. I want one!

All of the quilts were incredibly fantastic. They all deserved to win. I almost voted for the quilt from Fresh Lemons. I loved that one too. It might come down to who has the most exposure and the most fans who are willing to draw attention to their work.

I really do love this quilt from Fresh Lemons too. I think that the reason I voted for the one from Freshly Pieced is that it didn’t have negative space. I am not opposed to negative space, mind you, and I think it is very well used here. There is just a tiny part of me that prefers and overall symmetrical design. It is very subjective.

After looking at all of the quilts again before voting, and voting for the Freshly Pieced quilt, I moseyed on over to Lee’s web site and noticed that the pattern for her quilt entry to the challenge is on sale as a pattern for the low price of $4.99. I had never bought a downloadable pattern. I’ve downloaded relatively few free patterns, actually. And I think that I have bought all of ONE quilt pattern in hard copy format from a quilt store.

I like to buy books, and I am more of a do-it-yourselfer than a follower. it is very unlike me to want to make someone else’s quilt. But I liked this one so much, and the price was right, so I thought, “Why not?” And I bought it.

Besides, if I am ever going to create patterns myself for sale, and I probably will, it makes some sense to see what they look like.

I worked like crazy to do this new border in one week. A few burgundy borders will follow this border. At this point the quilt top occupies the center of the queen sized mattress with about six to eight inches on each of the four sides.

I took my photographs today at at time when shadows were being cast on the front porch, which is my staging area for photographs. I decided to stretch out the quilt top on the porch at an angle and go for some artsy effects.

We’ll call this one “Prisoner of Paper Piecing”.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to quilt this piece. I’ve decided to use the two units that I found recently, which I thought had been lost, and create a small baby sized quilt using them. I can try out my quilting method on the new piece because it will have the hunter green and crimson hexagons dancing across the surface just as they do on the larger quilt top. The quilting I have in mind is going to emphasize the hunter green and crimson hexagons.

I am going to have to make two more units like the ones I already have. I will be joining the units with burgundy flowers, and making a burgundy flower border on all four sides. The piece will probably come out to  be about 36″ x 36″ making it large enough for a baby buggy quilt. I anticipate that this quilting sample will take me a few weeks. You can see the batik flower unit at the top of the image below, and the solid flower unit at the bottom. I will make one more of each of those units and place them diagonally in the design of the baby quilt.

Something I really like about doing this sample is that it is going to allow me to join those large square units with rows of flowers of a different color. That was my initial thought for the larger quilt, so now i get to see that idea realized even if on a small scale. At the time I considered this design I did not yet have the burgundy fabric. Things might have taken a different turn if I had already owned that fabric at the time that I etched my piecing strategy in stone.

I am even starting to get some ideas for a hexagon quilt done in a quilt-as-you-go method using units like the ones above appliquéd to a solid fabric and joined with rows of hexagon flowers appliquéd onto narrower strips.

I love it when the ideas flow from one project to the next. That’s the way I like to work.

The burgundy border is finished on the Batik Flower Garden Quilt. I’m not even going to try to count the number of flowers I had to add this week to finish the border.

Last night I was feverishly stitching together flowers and adding them to the border. At one point I placed the quilt top on a chair in the living room and Lori jumped up immediately to take her rightful place and started to groom herself. I caught her attention for a photograph and wished her away before she could do any damage.

If I were to finish off this piece now it would make a fine baby quilt, but there is another border on the way.