Candied Hexagons

Today I thought I would share with you a little bit of what I'm working on at the moment. My main project at the moment is Candied Hexagons by Kerry Dear. I was inspired by a number of ladies from the Sydney Scquilters group who have made different versions of the quilt. Di over at Snippets 'n' Scraps has a great summary of the history of this quilt, and you can see fantastic close ups of Janet's version at Quiltsalott.

The design by Kerry Dear was published in Quilter's Companion magazine, but the edition is now sold out. I was lucky and Kerry herself forwarded me a copy of the original pattern. The feature fabric used for the individual flower blocks in Kerry's version is a Kaffe Fassett print called Flower Lattice, which is also no longer available (or at least I couldn't find any!!) Instead I am using a Kaffe Fassett print called Bekah in Orange.

The pattern by Kerry Dear is machine pieced, but I was really looking for a portable project that I could take with, so I decided that I would hand piece the quilt. I should 'fess up at this point that I've never hand pieced a quilt before. Never. Ever. Oh, and I decided to do it by the English Paper Piecing method!

I have to say that I'm enjoying the whole process, I really love the paper piecing, and I'm managing to do a couple of blocks a week. Here is a sample of my blocks so far


Much to my surprise, I'm enjoying the process so much that I already know what my next paper pieced project will be, but I've promised myself that I'm going to finish this quilt before I move onto another hand project. There are 104 hexagons in the quilt, and including the "whole flower" blocks, I've made about 40 so far, so I'm nearly halfway there!

Until next time... Happy Quilting!

What's a "Pinky"?

I'm a Pinky! (well, it's what my sister calls me anyway)

It's one of those nicknames that started out for a silly reason, and kind of just stuck. It's been about 13 years, so I don't think I'm getting rid of the nickname any time soon!

So, this is my first post, and I'm sure that anyone out there reading is wondering what kind of things I am going to blog about. Well, mostly quilting and what I've been working on, although from time to time there may also be photography, cooking and books! I'm hoping to post at least once a week, so wish me luck!

Happy quilting!