Stitchapalooza

Despite our intentions to spend most of this Spring Break visiting museums and seeing friends in NYC and Philadelphia, a strep scare (ultimately negative) sidelined the younger boy, so I stayed home with him while Child the Elder accompanied his father to a Penguins-Islanders game and spent just one day in the Big Apple. I spent nearly 36 hours sitting with a sick son watching a neverending stream of movies and wrapping tiny hexagons for my neverending River project. I had a really enjoyable time talking with just one child at a time; we don't split them up for one-on-one time often enough. My fingers, however, were literally bleeding from the hexagons. Time to learn to use a thimble. The city tourists were kind enough to take a detour to the City Quilter and brought me a nice stack of cotton prints, always the best souvenir!

So many possibilities for these wonderful NYC-themed fabrics!!

After they returned on Saturday night, we just kind of hunkered down in the house and I put the hexies away for larger-scale projects. I made an entire quilt top for my California fabric "cousin challenge", although said cousin asked me not to post any photos so I will wait a while. (If you're in CT, though, you can see it at Lisa's Clover Hill, and I'll be teaching a class with the VERY EASY pattern on June 8.)

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at Open Sew days at Lisa's, then Thursday shopping and basting with my friend Tina. On Saturday morning I went back to Lisa's to pick out some monotone fabrics for a pixelated photo project that I'll be working on this summer. And, while the menfolk were in Springfield last night for yet another hockey game, I whipped up this nifty table runner (also with my new favorite, the Hex n More ruler):

This sucker is 18 x 80, which is a real table-filler in this house!

And, finally, today I added two outer rows to the triangle/hexagon project that I made using the cutaway pieces left over from the Jewel quilt.

The outer border was a good opportunity to practice Y-seams. I cut the strips exactly wide enough to use up the rest of the contrast fabric that I had leftover from my sister's purse.

And THAT's how you spend a Spring Break!