Hand sewing HEXIE flowers

 When I'm on vacation, I love to do a little hand sewing...especially EPP (English paper piecing).
This "stay at home" period isn't exactly vacation but I thought if I looked at it that way, it might improve my spirits.

So I asked daughter Jenn what color hexies she still needed for her quilt. She wanted tans, neutrals, browns and olives.

Well, I can do that. A few of these were already cut out so I stitched those up first.

Then I dug through my "drabs".

I didn't find many...I seem to collect brighter, cleaner colors.

But there were some shirtings...

And homespuns.

I stitched up 10 flowers for her and about 1/2 were darker or drab.

Then I decided to bake. Instead of buying bread, I'm baking loaves once a week. This week I did one sandwich loaf and one cinnamon raisin 😋

I love this recipe that I found online. It needs kneading for 7 minutes so I let my kitchenaid mixer handle that. So easy!

Here's the link:

homemade bread

STAY HOME & STAY SAFE everyone😷

Almost Christmas

I'm still in hexie mode... These pretty Kaffe fabrics are going to become hexagons that I will appliqué to background fabric. Sashing? Maybe. Quilt? Pillow? Who knows. I'll see what it needs to be later...  

My class will be to teach English paper piecing, fussy cutting, and appliqué. I want the project to be fairly easy so I'm going to include a mug rug pattern (Link to my HEXAGON FLOWER MUG RUG PATTERN)  made with just one hexie flower... that way it won't be overwhelming if someone is struggling with the hand work. Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching.. Kathys Quilts

And since it's almost Christmas, it's my annual cookie bake week, I've started getting the 10+ different batches baked. These have to go in the mail by December 15th. My two bachelor brothers that live out in CA and OR, look forward to this treat. 

And to think I was (somewhat) complaining that the temps were too high for December... missing the snow... well, not anymore. We've had snow EVERY DAY since the day after I mentioned the lack of it. We have plenty now and it keeps on coming... Sure is beautiful!

Took a trip to the U.P. of Michigan

As Al drove up to my brothers farm, I was able to get some hand stitching done. These 1930 reproduction fabrics are becoming hexie flowers for a medallion quilt. 

I packed plenty of fabrics but forgot to grab extra hexagon papers so I had to resort to cutting up flyers and magazine covers... Not pretty but it works!

My brothers farm needs LOTS of work to get it producing like he wants. He's still in the process of repairing outbuildings and planning fields. 

Potatoes were planted in the spring, then neglected till now because he works full time in Detroit. This will become a retirement farm for him. In the meantime, my sister and I will harvest, can and freeze some of the fruits and veggies. 

I worked on one long row and two short rows to get these beauties. The plants could REALLY use more growing time so we'll be back in a month to dig the rest.

These are just a small amount of the potatoes....we wanted to try all the varieties. Purple potatoes are a new thing for me... I haven't ever had a chance to try these and was very surprised at how creamy and good they were.

After we came home I had a chance to work on my Double Nine patch blocks. As of today, I have eight blocks left to make :)  seeing a light at the end of the tunnel!