Kindle Sleeve Tutorial Part 1

Ok, hexagon lovers! Here's the Kindle Cover tutorial I promised! These instructions are for the smaller-sized Kindle- if you have a larger one, or wish to adapt this for an iPad, you'll need more hexagons than I specify.
I'm doing this in two parts since it will probably take more than a few hours for you to make... :)

Materials:

paper hexagons- I used 92, each with 3/4" sides-- I printed them here. Just scroll down to hexagons, and put .75 in for the side length. I love this size because they can be made from pieces as small as 2" wide strips, and yet are large enough to show off each print. You will need to print off 3 pages if you plan on making all the hexagons first, and fewer if you baste and stitch together as you go.
scraps of fabric- enough for the above-mentioned 92 hexagons
Scrap of binding about 42" long
needle
thread- I recently switched to Mettler silk finish (50 weight). I find it tangles less. I also use a natural tone. You will also need perle cotton (#8) if you plan on hand quilting.
scissors
LOTS OF TIME :D


Ok. To start with, baste your hexies, doing a tiny backstitch to tack down each fold, with a small knot at the last corner. I do not baste through the papers.

By doing it this way, I can reuse the templates- I flatten them with a hot, dry iron in between uses- this crisps them back to normal. I've been able to use some 5 times now! The other benefit to this method is that you don't need to remove your basting stitches!

Baste all 92 of these little buggers! If you keep your supplies gathered in a small baggy, it can become your purse project- something easily tossed in your purse when you know you'll be waiting somewhere.

Got 92 hexagons now? Great!

Lay them out in some sort of pleasing fashion...

It needs to be 8 rows wide. If there are some scraps you don't love so much, use them on the edges and corners since these pieces will be trimmed once we square it up. Any hexagon that hangs past the main piece will be trimmed, too... so keep that in mind.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Vacation!

Part of this project is traveling with me!

Have hand work, will travel.
 I'm off on vacation for a bit... Tim had to stay home and work, and watch our dogs. 

My hexies are coming with me, as is my Kindle. I'm ready for anything- or nothing at all! 

While I'm down there, we're finally spreading my dad's ashes. The Gulf oil spill got in the way last summer, and I don't think Mom was ready yet. We ALL are ready now. 

I'm so excited for some SUNSHINE!!!!!

See you later, alligator!

An ode, almost.

It's been another sad half hour of job hunting... seriously, because our town is so small, it takes a half hour tops to do a job search within a feasible driving distance. But, on the bright side, not having a job gives me oh-so-much time to cook, sew, and engineer domestic tranquility.

This leads me back to the hexagon obsession. Last night, I sat here stitching one hexie to another, basting about 50 more, and loving each and every one.

Why do I love them SO MUCH????

Hexagons let me slow down.
They let my otherwise jackrabbit quick brain slow down.
They allow me to make a fat quarter's worth of fabric last for a whole day, rather than ten minutes.
They help me keep sewing despite an almost non-existant fabric budget.
They allow me to feel each and every piece, to analyze patterns, play with colors.
They remind me that simple isn't boring.

Hexagons, in a way, are helping me continue to heal my soul.

This gathering has turned into 52 (at the moment) diamonds built from 9 hexagons each. Many of them came from fabric scraps given to me by a dear friend. If only she knew how many hours of enjoyment her "trash" has given me so far.

A Finish!

Inspiration.

 From floor

to pillow. 

Hand pieced, hand quilted. The borders were put on by machine.

Still waiting for the tax return so we can go back and get our new couch and kitchen table (with matching chairs! More than 2 of them! What a novel idea).

New ideas, new uses, same old hexagon obsession.

I've been doodling some ideas... mostly for hints of embroidery to work into quilt projects (remember I said I wanted more handwork? My brain is obliging!).

 This is one of the doodles. I'm one of the oddballs who like dandelions, mostly because they're so darn persistent! You can see I had to alter my drawing- I loved it, but the flower was too low for what I wanted, so snip, snip, tape, voila! Remember that book I want to make? This could end up as part of it... I have an idea forming, growing, percolating...

I bent the stem more once I started stitching.

 I traced it very  lightly with pencil onto white muslin and started stitching. I had to do something for about an hour while I waited for my Kindle to charge. It came today!!!

 And look at that fit! Thank you to my wonderful husband for indulging me this Valentine's Day with such an awesome present. I love it!

 I figured out what to do with the first attempt at a case for it, too- it will control power cords for my most used devices, making them much more portable. My phone charger, Kindle cord, and laptop cord all fit nicely in there.

And, finally, for anyone wondering what on earth I intend to do with all my hexagons, here's some hexie play for the day. I want to make a quilt out of them, something along the lines of a giant medallion. The focus will be more on value- light, medium, dark- rather than color. This is not a permanent formation since there's not enough contrast for my liking, but I'm working on it. I like knowing that this particular project has no deadline. Other than maybe our ten year anniversary, which gives me 8 years!!!

And as far as personal sickness, I refuse to get worse- another gallon of tea today, and the cough is waning. Let's hear it for hot tea! One more gallon tomorrow and I should be human again. I've got plenty of reading, so I think I can rest enough to satisfy even my mom's orders.

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Let's keep this week rolling!

Explaining addiction

Almost all of these were made from scraps a quilting friend gave me last fall.

I have a very hard time keeping warm in winter. I usually have three layers on at least, but still find it difficult to stay warm, which means I require a blanket. I love blankets! But, they're kind of a pain when it comes to sewing at my machine, and all the moving around it takes in my sewing room.

That, my friends, is my excuse reason for being addicted to hexagons right now. I can sit in the living room (which is the warmest room of our house) and baste hexagons while sitting under a blanket. The added bonus is I can watch tv while stitching them.

And it's even better on a day like today when I am wearing my hoodie that has the hand warmer sleeves!!!

I've been playing around with needlework/embroidery during this cold spell, too. The Henrietta Whiskers BOM kept me busy during the ice storm, and after initial machine piecing I was able to get warm again under my trusty blanket.

This has me thinking perhaps I need to do more embellishment. Maybe take some ideas floating in my head, piece them, and then do some sort of fun embroidery on them. That way the hands will stay busy which keeps the mind quieter.

I have a bunch of Other things I need to do, though! I have too many UFO's and need to start finishing rather than procrastinating. Or at least it feels like procrastinating, even though I have a goal for these hexies...

But take today: I had wanted to clean/organize my sewing room, all because my brother will be passing through on Sunday to see our house for the first time. Right now, he'd look in there and shake his head that his messy little sister still can't keep "her room" clean. So I wanted to clean, but after 5 minutes in there, I was shivering uncontrollably, and so I grabbed the rest of Sally's scrap bag and headed back to the living room...

 After basting somewhere between 300 and 400 and storing them safely away from a swinging dog tail, I am cutting up more scraps for more hexagons piece and quiet.

This is the last of what was a medium-sized plastic bag filled with her scraps (and oh what lovely scraps they are!). We're talking larger than a normal grocery bag, but not quite the huge kind from Joann's. Still, that's a lot of fabric! My rough estimate is that I will end up with at least 1000 hexagons from Sally's scraps. Sally, thank you for your generosity!

I will probably still be sewing these to and from Florida next month. I guess I should look up TSA regulations and find some scissors that won't get me a full body search! It's going to be odd enough explaining the black box Mom and I will have with us....

"Excuse me, ladies, what's in the box?
"Oh, that's my dad. We're spreading him in the gulf."

I'm laughing already thinking about it!!

A lesson in patience

Kindle Cover 2.0

I think this was worth messing up the first one.

I quilted the circles without tracing any templates. Call me a rebel. I didn't want to worry about washing out chalk. 

 18 hours. That's how long it took to hand-piece and hand-quilt this. I stitched the binding on with my machine to help keep the hexies from fraying or separating, but then stitched it down on the other side by hand. 

 It's it gorgeous?

Those 18 hours even include a minor detour to make a strawbeeroo (that's how I said strawberry when I was little) pincushion. Christie (of Describe Happy) had a link to a tutorial that i had bookmarked a while ago... kind of felt like a sign that it was time to make one. And it cam in handy while hand-piecing. Plus it's just so cute I could eat it. :D

Floored

The floor from the furniture store in town is so cool

and is why I had to make my hexagon pillow:

 I just need to decide on a border and sew that on, and then I can quilt it. Probably by hand, since at this point I have lost track of the hours in it, so why not make it a labor of love? I finished this yesterday, since I feel MUCH better. Not perfect, cough is lingering, but I'm one of those people who can be perfectly well but sound like death because of a cough that has camped out. In case you're wondering, over a gallon of hot tea over 12 hours is apparently my "cure". Final count: 2 green tea, 1 raspberry, 5 mint, and 1 honey chamomile.

 These are the "flowers" for my Kindle cover (since I know I am getting one!). I love traditional grandmother's flower gardens, but if you've learned anything about me it's that I don't make traditional. So, I chose colors that would be unexpected for flowers, and omitted the borders between them, and here ya go. The Hubs LOVES it. I guess that means it's possible to make a manly flower garden!!!

 Speaking of love, I made his laptop sleeve. A nice, manly green. It's lined with navy fleece and has batting, so it should hold up well. The buttons came from an old tim I've had since I was probably 9 or 10. One of my grandmothers gave them to me, and so far they've come in handy3 times in the last 3 months.

 We got a bunch more snow yesterday- 6" of it! That's more than we got during the "blizzard" since it came down mostly as ice last week. It created the urge to bake, though, hence the cupcakes. All from scratch yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. YUM!

This is what we saw driving yesterday. mind you, this is semi #2 of 3 that we saw in a ditch in a 2-mile span. I'm so glad we have a good truck with 4 wheel drive!

I only have one dilemma today: I need a new hand-stitching project!

SLEETED in

It turned into sleet! Yuck!

"Blizzard warning waffles"

But the waffles we made for breakfast sure were good!

We had some pretty, fluffy, heavy snow earlier yesterday- I liked it. It really does look so pretty from inside! But then it turned into sleet, which iced over everything. I was very glad to hear our garage open last night and know Tim made it up the hill- he said even his truck had a hard time on the ice.

 I did get my Henrietta Whiskers block done- there are three square in a square blocks to attach to the left side, but they're done. I guess technically it's not "done" since I need black embroidery floss to do the eye, but seeing as I can't go anywhere in this icy mess, it's done for now.

I only made small progress on the hexagons. I got into the Biggest Loser last night, and did some ballet-type exercises during the show rather than just sitting on my butt the whole time. I had a hypothesis, and it seems to be true, that by strengthening my feet like when I was in ballet, I could get rid of the need for an arch support. So far, so good! Which means plies and releves will remain a habit from now on to keep my feet healthy and happy.

Happy groundhog day! No shadow here!
:)

Tedious, but worth it.

 She's been sleeping like this while I made more hexagon progress.

I had to get up for a green tea break... now both monsters are running around and causing a ruckus. But as soon as I sit back down, they will probably settle back into their sleeping spots and conk out again. I love dogs.

Slow going

This is what I was doing while most of the state was sleeping. Since I took this picture at 6 am, I have sewn 10 more purple hexies. I've been up since 4, so I'm sewing slowly at this point.

When Tim got up, he found a leaking pipe in the basement that caused all sorts of chaos- thankfully, he was able to temporarily fix it (I love being married to a handyman!).

So, we needed a little stress relief...

 Roid Rage Barbie (Our nickname for her since she's so muscular) joins the Air Force!!!

When she's not in uniform, she masquerades as a hoodlum.

I hope that brightens someone else's day as much as ours.

Figure this one out

I got my eyes checked again yesterday (it had been awhile...). The good news is that I have contacts again, and they're the correct RX again. BUT GET THIS: I went from being nearsighted to being farsighted!!!! No wonder I was having trouble seeing! All I can figure is that because my astigmatism worsened, it caused things to switch again. But I'm no Dr, I'm just guessing. Last time it happened, I had been going through a growth spurt when I was 11. I ended up with a horrible headache by the end of the day, though- happens every time I get new contacts. But I got this done before I was in too much agony:

Just needs to be quilted and bound and it will be ready to be donated to AAQI.

 And basted a bunch more of these:

 And since Tim loves the AAQI quilt so much, I decided to make hexagon flowers for our spring wall hanging:

I really love these hexies. I see now why people are such fans of them. If I can hand-baste these with the headache I had last night, they are definitely easy. And stitching these together while watching a movie with the hubs this afternoon kept us both happy.

I'll be happy as a clam this March when I have to fly again since I can bring handwork like this. I haven't flown in two and half years... it will be interesting. But at least I'm on the same flights as my momma, and we'll be headed to Florida! Even though it's because we're finally spreading my dad, I think it will still be a fun trip. Especially if I can work in a trip to a quilt shop... :)

PRO

I am a pro at procrastinating. The last few days, I've let Tim be a distraction for any and all things productive (2 days a week is ok since they're his days off). Today, I need to get back to business.

I haven't been totally idle, though-

They remind me of poker chips... wouldn't that be a fun swap? Trading hexies?

I have 54 more hexies basted. Some of these were done in the truck yesterday when we went and picked up the last two pieces of a cabinet from my mom's. These little guys will probably become a Kindle cover- I don't have one yet, but it's on my wish list, and Tim is always looking for ideas for presents, so I told him it would be a great anniversary gift... and by July 4th I should have enough of these basted and maybe sewn together to make the cover for it! I need to decide what colors, though, since right now they're all sorts of random scraps. I'm thinking either pink/green/orange or blue/brown/green for color schemes.... I feel like I need a wider variety of each shade so I can lay them out and decide on which colors to focus.

But, like I said, I also need to refocus on other projects already in the works. RRCB is about a third assembled- 4 rows done, plus about half the border units. My sewing room has been soooooo chilly lately because it has 3 windows and not much sun, and today's going to be a HIGH of 11... I really want to make some more progress, but if I get so cold that I pin my finger to the fabric without feeling it again, I'll have to stop until a warmer day.

First things first: to the gym!!!

I got hooked.

Tim called my RRCB in progress beautiful! That's even better than him calling me beautiful! I haven't made much more progress on it though... I've been on a quest of sorts.

HEXAGONS!

I wanted to see if I could find a punch for them so I could conquer learn to English paper piece, and not that 7-hour fiasco that was the first hexie caddy. After much internet searching, and stopping in every place that carries any sort of paper crafting supplies in Kokomo (which, if you want to know, is only 5 according to Google maps), I came home and figured, No problem, I'll just print templates... but then the printer wouldn't communicate with my laptop! So I tried what I had to do last time- uninstall, then redownload software from the Lexmark website (last time I had to do this AFTER a 30 minute phone call with customer service). But guess what? Lexmark doesn't have the software link anymore!!!! Are you kidding me???? Thankfully, Tim saved the day... he was able to get the printer working earlier today, so I asked him- apparently Apple has the needed software, so just by plugging it in, my laptop identified what printer it was, and what it needed to function. This is why I love Apple! But it did take me about 2 hours to get frustrated, trace some pitiful hexies on my own, and finally hear back from Tim.

So, finally, while watching The Biggest Loser:

These are the pitiful hexies- they're slightly larger than the printed ones, but that's ok. I think this will get appliqued.... somewhere. But I have 5 sheets of 33 hexagons to play with. I cut on sheet already, and plan on basting the matching 7 pieces of fabric so that on our trip to get the last piece of furniture from my mom's I'll have something to do on the way up.

I'm telling you- Hexagons are addictive. Slow going right now, but I'm approaching them as a way to teach myself patience, especially while I feel like I'm in limbo again. So, stitch, stitch, breath.... if it's meant to be, it will happen.

Stitch, stitch, breath....