Back in July (July 19 to be extact) I wrote about starting the Hexy MF Quilt.  At the end of that post I stated that I hoped to have all the hexagons basted by the end of the week.  Oh the folly of the newly parented.

I’ve only just finished the basting in the past couple of days.  That’s nearly 2 months of trying to just find the time (and inclination) to glue fabric to paper.

I had seriously underestimated how long it would take and how my enthusiasm for it would wane. I had originally planned to do some glue basting and some stitch basting, but in the end I just wanted to get them done so I stuck with the glue basting.

As I basted them I organised them into their flower assembly.  I figure this will help me just systematically work through the pile without getting distracted by matching center fabrics.

It was a little more difficult than I thought it would be working with a predefined fabric for the centers.  I had 5 fabrics available to choose from for the center hexagons (a challenge that I had set myself by only using fabrics I already had in my stash) and in the end it just came down to choosing what I thought was the best fit for each flower fabric.  A lot of times the centre hexagon would not be the fabric I would have picked if I didn’t have the constraint, but I’m kind of proud of myself for sticking with it and going outside of my OCD comfort zone.

I’ve been really surprised to see how the hexagons may work with each other.  I found at times that fabric I really loved made a pretty average looking flower but fabric that I thought was really gross has the potential to make a really stunning flower.  I purposely didn’t fuss cut the fabric because I just wanted it to be random (and again I wanted to go outside my OCD comfort zone).

Now that all the hexagons are basted I can start with the stitching and thus the flower assembly begins.  I’m both excited and procrastinating about starting with the stitching.  I’m not renowned for my neat stitching so this should be a challenge, but I’m sure by the time I’ve stitched 444 hexagons together I may have improved.

I’m going to set myself the goal of doing at least 1 flower a week.  (Yes, I know that with 74 flowers needing to be done it will be over a year before they’re all done but I do suspect that there may be weeks when I get more than 1 done… but I also know that life has more distractions these days and I’m ok with that.  It’s another test for my OCD nature.)

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