Welcome Fall!  This was a beautiful weekend in central Texas.  We visited my MIL and on Saturday, I could really feel the weather break into a true Fall breeze and temperatures.  It was absolutely wonderful!  Can’t wait for it to reach down a little further south, to Houston this week.

Since we were on a road trip for a couple of days, I quickly got some handwork pulled together for my idle time.  I had already been thinking about visiting Yoyoville again (pattern by Bunny Hill Designs).  I already had the yo yos completed in the Tapestry collection by Fig Tree quilts… now I needed to applique them all to 3 1/2″ squares of background fabric.  I had a rare chance to visit my LQS in Humble, TX (shout out to It’s A Stitch).  They have the Honeysweet fabric already in, but not on the shelves yet.  They were generous enough to open up the first bolt and cut me off three yards of what I thought would be a great choice to go along with the Tapestry yo yos.

Here’s my little sewing kit getting unpacked:

And here’s a picture of the threads and background squares I have cut up to work with:

Again, the squares are from Honeysweet and are little dot hexagons in a soft olive green.

I had a pile done by Saturday afternoon … finished on the right, glued down on the left:

I STILL love that Tapestry collection!  And the Honeysweet neutral went great with it.

After coming home tonight, I wanted to preview the layout of the quilt center.  I wasn’t sure if that background would be a bit too much through-out.

But first – I had to make up some four-patch units to alternate with the yo yo squares.  I cut off a 2″ strip from my background and then opened up a mini charm pack of Honeysweet and sewed it along the length of that strip:

I trimmed them all down to 2″ x 3 1/2″ and then combined units together to get the 3 1/2″ squares.

Here’s a sample up on my design wall.

I wasn’t thrilled.  I wanted to be thrilled, but I wasn’t.  The background from Honeysweet didn’t seem like it would be directional, but turns out it is – and it clearly shows up that way in this layout.  …  SO … I decided to just use the vanilla solid fabric from Honeysweet instead for the four patch units and see how that would look:

MUCH better!  I like that base of solid vanilla in those squares.  Here’s another look from a bit more of a distance:

By the way, the poppy print (seen in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th units) is my very favorite – in all the colors.  I will have to buy yards of that I know already.

Since I don’t have any of the Honeysweet vanilla solid yardage yet, I pulled out the two squares from one of my layer cakes and now I can make a few more four-patch units to play around with.  I’m so excited to be working with this collection now.

This weekend, I also received my yardage of small, light gray polka dot fabric from the Vintage Modern group (Bonnie & Camille).  That will be my setting fabric for the Birdie Stitches quilt.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of my fast growing kitten clan.  Jewelry and Rosy.

 

Have a great start to the week!  See you soon!

Jennifer