March???

March slipped by pretty quickly for me. Mr. Moosebay came through his surgery with flying colors, but it will be another month before he can lift anything over ten pounds. That leaves all the dog walking to me, as Kylie is under the mistaken idea that she is really a sled dog--I'm pretty sure I will eventually end up with a dislocated shoulder! She is still very timid, and won't leave the front step unless someone is with her, so I have been doing four "walks" a day--really eats up my sewing time! 

I've done lots of Slow Stitching this month (I caught a cold, so much of my stitching was done in bed--lol!). The Stitching Society Wool Hexagons that I stitched in 2014-2015 are finally a quilt!
(information on Stitching Society is HERE)

To put the hexagons together, I used black thread to machine zigzag them onto a foundation of Shape-Flex, a fusible interfacing.  I did five sections of three rows each to make the Fly Stitching over the zigzag easier. 

This is how the back looked after the zigzag and fly stitching.
I had the hexagons arranged on my design wall and to get them onto the foundation I had to lay them out upside down and backwards from the design wall onto my ironing board, cover them with a length of Shape-Flex and press into place. Fun! 

After all the fly stitching was complete, I fused the sections together, zigzagged again, and finished with more fly stitching. 

Hmmm....how to quilt it? I had so many ideas--maybe a tiny button at each point (too distracting!), maybe big stitch quilting inside the fly stitching in each hexagon (too stressful for my arthritic hands!), maybe machine quilted in some way? In the end, even though I hadn't tied a quilt since 1974 (and for good reasons!) that's what I decided to do. And I think I had a pretty brilliant idea of loading the quilt layers onto my HQ16, rolled it all the way to the end so I could reach under the quilt, and did the tying, working from bottom to top. It worked out great and was so easy--I would almost do it again--lol! 

I really wanted to channel Racheldaisy because I love her fun and colorful take on quilting, and do some fun bright colors for the tying, but in the end, I wimped out and  used six strands of embroidery floss--two strands each of three blue/gray colors. 

And, of course, it's not a quilt until it's labeled! 

Stitching Society Wool Hexagons (no fun name--sorry) was my March One Monthly Goal and also was on my first quarter Finish-A-Long list. Sure feels good to have this one done!!

After all that hand work, I have an appointment for cortisone injections in both wrists next week, but that won't stop me from doing some Slow Stitching today--I have a few more flowers to sew down on this months Primitive Garden block!