When Life Gives You a Bonus!

Miss Emmy Lou Lou just watching on and shaking her head.

She is always within eye-shot if not just ear-shot.

She is also extremely conversational and will meow and meow at me like I should be able to completely understand every sound she makes.

She calls me to bed when she’s had enough of watching me sew.  She’ll go half way up the stairs, turn to me and beckon me with “Come on, already!” meows.  She is the queen at 17.

And yesterday she was my comforter as I waited for the outcome of my brother Mark’s surgery.

In the early afternoon hours came a group text to us all from Mark stating  “I just want to tell everybody that I'm doing great! Surgery went well and I'm just recovering. Hoping to leave tomorrow?!”

Update:  The shunt isn't draining as planned.  He is still in the hospital and more surgery will happen tomorrow.  Continued prayers are more than welcome.  Thank you.

From here we wait.

Through all of this, having only glanced at my flight plans for Iowa today, I had assumed it to be a MORNING flight.  5am.  No.  Check again.  5 PM! PM!!! 

BONUS!  I’ve got 12 more hours home to work on some things, plan some things, catch up on some things…but most of all, just be home.  And the way I’m feeling there just may be an early afternoon nap as icing on the cake.  I need to be at the airport by 4pm.  This bonus day has my name all over it.

Almost long enough but not quite!

When you take a hexagon design from hexagon shape (the quilt center) and extend it to become rectangular (neutral corners added) you can see that the side edges will be one thing, but the top and bottom edges will be another.  That’s the way it goes with hexagons.  The top and bottom of a hexagon are flat, the sides are pointy.  Which means, my top and bottom borders will be slightly different than the sides, but they still need to flow around the corners.

I thought I didn’t want such a deep scalloped edge, and I didn’t want to lose the appearance of the rosettes along the bottom edge, so I had thought about adding neutral hexagon spacers in there so the edge wasn’t so extremely scalloped.  But I didn’t like it.

See the far right side?

I think this is what it is going to be for now because even adding another brown spacer will lose the appearance of the hexie rosettes.

My very first hexagon quilt, finished in the early 1990s had a “knife edge” finish, meaning I trimmed the backing 1/4’’ bigger than the top, and turned the edge to the inside, blind stitching the quilt closed and quilted close to the edge, no binding required.  I’m thinking of doing the same thing with this one if I ever get it to that point.

As it stands, this border side needs 4 more rosettes to complete the length and turn the corner.  And then I’ll do the opposite side in mirror image.  And then I’ll finish by dealing with the top and bottom borders.

Years and years have gone into this project already. Is it any wonder that it sports the hashtags of #milehighhexieclub (being worked on while flying) and #eternalhexieproject  because….what if it NEVER ends??

I spent some evening time finishing up some snowballs. Click the video to play:

A post shared by Bonnie K Hunter (@quiltville_bonnie) on Aug 1, 2017 at 5:21pm PDT

Sew faster, Bonnie! I love the hyperlapse app, too much fun!

Beginning the layout phase!

All of my hard work is evidenced by the multitude of threads on my studio carpet right now!  As soon as I get this webbed I can get it off the floor and get that vacuum running.  It's just not a high priority.  Would I prefer to vacuum for the camera?  Or get this quilt laid out and sewn?  No contest!

Which brings me to the other good thing about yesterday:

This was me yesterday as well!

(And no, they don't clean my basement studio!)

With only two days (plus 12 bonus hours) home in between each of these three long trips (Pennsylvania, Utah, and Iowa/Minnesota) there is no way I could survive without my cleaning crew! It's likely the nicest thing I do for myself. They worked around me while I was getting book orders out.  Perfect arrangement.

Quiltville Quote of the Day!

I have literally simply washed the contents of my suitcase and am packing it back in – with the addition of a swim suit.  After my Minnesota workshops are done in Chaska, I’m headed to Maple Grove.  My mom will be visiting her two crazy sisters – my aunts.  And I’ll get to spend a few days with them before coming home.  I plan to spend much of it in my aunt's pool!

More family time.  SO worth it.

And now I”m off to see what I can do for the next 6 hours before we leave for the airport -

Have a great Wednesday, everyone!

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