It is a beautiful week-end here in South Texas, heading into a hot humid summer! I have re-hired my housekeeper and she will come 2 times a month. I believe things have worked out with her and she is an excellent cleaner. I am relieved about this! My energy level is doing well, but I see another Radio Frequency treatment for my back coming in late May or early June as I think the stupid nerves are coming alive again. So much easier to do this than going through back surgery at my age! YEA!
We see a day trip to Rockport, Texas soon to check out the re-building after the hurricane last year. If all is going well, we will be scheduling a week at the coast and I am so ready for this. The Inn at the Fulton Harbor is open now and they have a lovely cottage that we want to stay in and enjoy the fresh air and sit by the water and relax! More on that one later! It is times like this that I miss our 36′ Fifth Wheel, but it was time to let it go in late December 2016.
I did my Heart for today and have finished preparing the remaining hearts for applique! Now it is just spending the 20 minutes or so to applique one each morning.
Now to the procrastination part of this Post. I had always thought that the Mountmellick quilt would be a difficult quilt to make and kept putting things off! I have now realized that it is NOT a difficult quilt to make – it is just so much repetition of circles and flowers, leaves, etc. I can easily become bored doing the same thing over and over and taking so long to complete a border. So having realized this, I am now thinking that when I finish this border which has 28 each 3 1/2″ hexagon flowers and 58 very small leaves, that I will be done and it will become a Mini-Mountmellick. The last border will be the fabric that Di Ford used on her quilt and since I purchased too much of the fabric, there will be enough left over for the backing! By making this decision I will no longer slow myself down on other projects! I am SO ready to move on and out of this procrastination phase of MM!
Here is what I have been working on and it has been like pulling teeth! SLOW! Each hexagon was fussy cut and that takes so much time! The one thing that will speed this project up is to know that I am on the last border that has a lot of hand work to do. No more procrastination on Mini-Mountmellick! There are a total of 196 – 1/2″ hexagons to make the 28 flowers – including the center which are the black hexagons. I have one completed, and 5 ready to complete! Long way to go on this baby!
This is a picture of the border and finished flower
Then there are the leaves – nice 1 1/2″ leaves! This was just so much fun to do! I do not know what I would do without Jenkins pre-cut freezer paper. It saved me so much time. There are 60 leaves and to trace enough of them would have taken forever!
My next project will be a pieced quilt top as the only piecing project currently on the UFO list is to make 15 large Dresden Plates for the Mini-Dresden 1930 quilt top! After making them, I then will have to applique the 105 mini Dresden’s and the 15 large Dresden’s to background fabrics and put the quilt together! I will probably do this one in a grid also. To me it is easier than appliqueing to a 5 or 6 inch square. This will be done later during the Summer.
I wonder sometimes just how many quilters experience ‘quilt burn out‘, procrastination of a project, etc because it becomes boring or we just want to move on. I guess this is why we all end up with UFO’s. Gretchen gave me some good ideas to divert my attention to something that will spark my interest when this happens. Read a book, clean up the sewing room, knit a dish cloth, sit in the sun, and go through all the books I have purchased without taking the time to read them. I will be taking these suggestions at heart and try to get over any quilt burnout or procrastination on a UFO.
I have 2 quilts in my mind that I want to make next and so it is decision time again. Think I will make the Dresden Plates while deciding!
Have a great week-end!
Nanette
Chopin - A Passionate Quilter From Texas 
Pretty heart. They will sew up nicely in that 20 minutes a day for the rest of the month. I love that it is quick and easy and so fun to see when they each are done.
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It is fun to see a project coming together. Tempting to just do them all, but then it is also fun to say – well, in 20 minutes I will have something done!
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Seriously? You made 196 fussy cut half inch hexies EXACTLY THE SAME?? No wonder you got bored. I like the heart.
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Hey – I had cut out the 196 with other fabrics thinking that it was the way to go, UNTIL I found a few of these hexagons that I had cut out awhile back! Yes an idiot! But they are now done. I will not be seeing them for a few days – LOL. Moving on to something that will get me going again! Thank you for the comment! Have a great Sunday
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I wish you would have shown the 1 hexie flower you have made. Another suggestion is to figure out the fabrics you are going to use on Ancient Stars next year. Need to get the plans made for that quilt too!
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I will update.
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I am enjoying your daily hearts and I see you are hand sewing them on one piece of fabric.
Will you be cutting them apart or using the whole piece when finished sewing?
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Thank you Colleen. They will be cut into 6″ squares and the I will decide if I am going for a 5″ or 4 1/2″ finished. Probably a 5″. I learned this trick from Carol Armstrong on a project that she had in a magazine. You did the grid for 2 1/2″ and hand appliqued 2 1/2″ squares on the grid, but it was larger and made into a quilt when finished! It was a neat way to do a quilt!
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What an interesting heart. At first, I thought you had pieced two fabrics together making a design of some sort but then realized that it was one fabric doing all the work. Great fabric choice.
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Thx Karen. I was not sure about this one, but it came with all those fabric samples that I purchased, and I wanted each heart to be different! Hugs
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My go to favorite when doing handwork is an audio book, especially when I am getting tired of a project (and I have several of those at the moment!). Rewatching. A favorite movie
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Is also nice….I did BBC’s North and South yesterday, and was surprised at how much I got done! Your projects are so amazing to watch develop!
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OH I love North and South!!!! Any western that is from the old days and civil war movies! Thank you Kathy! I am trying and so close to getting things to a better stage! I have decided that Stonefields will just have to wait longer, not interested in doing more applique projects until I get MM and Nesting completed!
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I don’t blame you!
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Yes. I am tired of them. LOL. They are probably tired of me not working on them!
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😂
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Oh I do that also. I turn on Rifleman, an old western, politics, and I really need to turn on Bill and Rush when the TV gets old so I can become more frustrated! LOL. I think the day trip this week will be a wonderful break from all.
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It sounds like the perfect antidote!
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Love the heart…great choice of fabric! I am already procrastinating on my goals for the month. Who wants to do mending? Ha, ha! I am gardening and working on a quilt for a granddaughter instead.
And I agree with Chris in Canada…196 fussy cut tiny hexies??? I wouldn’t just be bored; I’d be insane!
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Mending is a dirty word to me. LOL. I went with fabric w/o fussy cutting and it did not do the quilt justice. So I opted for insanity and burnout! LOL
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I have just finished one those times where I look at my sewing room and think, I don’t want to work on that. Those times I clean the sewing room, the garage, or even start thinking of going on a fabric trip. I then walk thru a few fabric quilt shops to just get some motivation. It really helps.
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I have done that also and it helps. Just wish the stores were closer! A day trip to the coast will help Clay and I. He has been working on the preliminary work to paint the house! Hard work
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Then a trip to the coast is the best idea yet.
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Coming soon! Have a great week.
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This heart is so unique, great work on all the hexies, these flowers (with their little leaves) are going to be elegant.
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Thank you so much. It will be different!
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Cute heart, a nice little project! But all those hexies (and I love EPP)!
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Yup and I am 5’ 8” and do not have little fingers to play with those 1/2” papers. Fun!
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Hi Nanette,
Love today’s heart! One-half inch hexis, and 196 of them! HOLY MOLY! Yes, this definitely sounds like a project I would get bored of I am sorry to say. I certainly do not want to discourage you – and Gretchen made some fabulous suggestions. Really, all you can do is keep plugging away at it and now that you’re making it smaller it will go so much faster than it would have originally. Phew! ~smile~ Roseanne
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I am happy with the smaller one!
I hope I can finish them by end of May. Thx for commenting.
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You and I have the same problem with our attention spans when it comes to repetitive patterns on quilts. I look for those problems and stay away from them if I can. I’m about to get into a Bjorn Bear quilt and it’s only the colors that make a difference in the 12 bears but he’s so darn cute! Enjoy your coastal time! Harvey blessedly spared our home in Port O’Connor. The weather has been gorgeous and it’s so nice to get out of this humidity!
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I have done the more complex quilts like Mariner’s Compass but it was not boring. It is the time it takes to do the hand work that I, for some reason, am stalling. I think it is because I am cleaning out the UFO stack – and so ready to move on to others, but being careful that they are pieced!!!!!
We had visited Rockport in February and they were still in a mess. We are checking out the Inn and want to schedule a week there at the Cottage! I love the water, used to live in Corpus years ago and loved it.
Get ready – the 90’s are here and the humidity will be back tomorrow – I look for a very hot and humid summer this year – again – if only we could get about 10″ of rain!
Have a good week.
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