{More} Black & Red Hexie Notebooks

Success begets success. –Unknown

It has been a really slow year for finishes for me. Before this week, March was the last time I finished anything. I got my Phoenix quilt done on Monday and yesterday I finished four Hexie notebooks, showing here:

I love that apple batik. Very Twilight-y. Two of them are already in the mail to their recipients, although that's not really a huge accomplishment since one of them is for a birthday that was in May and the other is for a birthday that was two weeks ago. On the upside, the other two will arrive on time for the birthdays they are meant for in August and September, provided I remember to put them in the mail .

These little notebooks are so fun to make. I think I've done about 20 of them now. I used a 5" x 5" Chipboard Art Journal {Stampin' Up!® item #108495} for the notebook. I discarded the front cover, substituted Pellon Peltex 72F II and a rough approximation of this fabric postcard tutorial for the front cover and fused fabric to the chipboard back cover with Heat 'n Bond Lite. To put the Hexies together I cut the fabric, a layer of Mistyfuse and bit of batting using the largest {5”} Go! Hexagon. I trimmed the batting Hexagon down by ⅜” all the way around and used Mistyfuse to hold it in place on the back of the fabric while I quilted it {I placed the Hexie batting side down and put parchment paper on the ironing board to keep the allowance of Mistyfuse around the outer edge of the batting from fusing where I didn't want it}. After I'd finished quilting, I pressed the edges over and sewed it onto the notebook cover.

LadyBug, smart girl that she is, asked me recently why I don't just stick with one project until it is finished. I didn't really have an answer for her. Obsessive Creative Disorder, I suppose. Sometimes I stick with a project from start to finish, but cranking out a quilt in two weeks is a rare occurrence for me. Even the Phoenix quilt took more time than that and the disappearing nine-patch blocks were already finished. All I had to do was sash and quilt it.

I stuck with the Sesame Street quilt. Sort of. It was fun and challenging enough to hold my interest and I worked on block after block. But when I saw I wasn't going to make the quilt show deadlines, I put it on hold and pulled out the Pinwheel Sampler hoping I might finish it in time. I spent too much time ripping out quilting and trying again and I didn't get that done either.

Finishing the Phoenix quilt and these four little notebooks {which were great FMQ practice} just feels good. I sometimes get in my own way . Starting the Sesame Street quilt in mid-April, while fun, took up a lot of time and kept me from finishing anything else on my quilting to-do list for this year. I plan on finishing the Sesame Street quilt within a year of starting it; I think for me the year mark is when a project becomes a Project Half-Done. And I have plenty of those I need to finish up in the next little while {as well as a few new projects; if only I could quilt full-time}.

I think I'm past the half-way mark on the quilting on the Pinwheel Sampler so I'm going to take LadyBug's advice and stick with it until it is done. You can hold me to it . If I even hint at working on something else before it's done, refer me to this post.