Sampler

I spent the entire afternoon shoveling dirt out of a huge planter box that has been infiltrated by gophers. The plan is to replace the 10-year-old wire mesh at the bottom of the box and hopefully get a few more productive years out of the bed. It was HARD, and boy am I proud of myself! But it doesn't make for a very pretty picture (neither the pile of dirt or ME), so I decided to share this with you instead.

I ended up with a ton of extra hexagons while working on my hexagon quilt. These ones just didn't fit in for one reason or another, so the other day I decided to sew them together into... something. Of course it would have made more sense to work on one of the many other unfinished projects I have laying around, but whatever. I'm always most excited about the new project that pops into my head. I'm thinking of this as a sampler of sorts. It was really good practice for me in terms of sewing hexagons together, and I am planning on hand quilting it, which is what I'd like to ultimately do on my real hexagon quilt. This little thing is a much less intimidating piece to learn on.



This was my first time ever basting with clothespins - this is the bag I received from my Grandma a few years ago. I usually use straight pins and routinely jam them into my fingers while machine quilting whatever I'm working on. It's just part of my process. Somehow, though, that didn't sound as trivial when paired with hand-quilting. I'd like that experience to be as relaxing and pain-free as possible, so I braved the clothespins. I've always avoided them because it annoys me to have to close them. Basting is my least favorite part of quilting and I'd rather bleed all over my quilt than close up a few clothespins - it seems to take too long. This was easy, though, because my tiny quilt is only about 12" square. I'm thinking it would look cute under a vase of flowers or something. Of course there is no wall space to speak of on which to hang it, and maybe it is too crazy and weird for that anyways. I'll probably just tuck it away until I have a real sewing space to put it.