Thirty-Two Scrappy Hexagon Flowers

    I finished the last cotton nightgown on Sunday, it is green with white polka dots.  I want to make one more nightgown for myself with pretty Christmas fabric but I can't find any pretty Christmas fabric.  I'm going to wait until the Christmas in July sales and I'm hoping I'll find Christmas fabric to make one more nightgown.

   Since I finished making my nightgowns, I have been sewing these scrappy hexagon flowers together for the quilt top.  I figure it will take a week to finish each flower block with the next two rounds of hexagons they need.

      

Four Nightgowns Finished.

   I love my new nightgowns in pretty pastels and prints.  I have made six in the last week and I have one more cut out ready to assemble.

 
   I think the last one is my favorite.  It's a Boyds Bears print and I love teddy bears.  This fabric is the cutest.

    After I finish making these nightgowns I'm going to transfer this pattern to Swedish tracing paper to preserve it along with some notes on how I make the nightgown.  It's a real keeper.

Two Nightgowns Finished.

   I finished sewing the hem of the second nightgown about 30 minutes ago.  I washed the fabric last night and started ironing and pinning my pattern early this morning.  I didn't work on them all day today, I had some other things to take care of but most of the day was taken up with sewing.

   I was experimenting with a 1" bias tape maker (cutting the strips 2" wide) on the purple nightgown and that binding was a little too wide.  I fixed my problem on the pink nightgown and I cut my strips 1 1/2" and folded these by hand which was just as easy as making the bias tape with an iron.  These nightgowns are fun to sew.

   I received three more fabrics in the mail today to make three more nightgowns.  I will wash the fabric tomorrow.

Quick Hairbands

    I needed hairbands and I finally found a pattern and picked out some fabrics to make them.  The last time I made hairbands they didn't turn out as nice as I wanted them to and I never wore them.  I think I will wear these more.

   I found my pattern here.  I didn't use the cover for the elastic or make my hairbands reversible, I used 5/8" fold over elastic to join the two ends.  I bought a grab bag of 10 different colors of fold over elastic from an etsy shop.

   I made six hairbands this afternoon.  These were super easy to make and I love the end result.

Slow Progress On The Grandmother's Flower Garden

   I now have three blocks done.  Each block takes a while and I take a little time off each time I finish a block.


 

    I have a three new sewing projects ready to do on the machine and I'll be taking a couple of days to finish those before I start making hexie flowers again.

More Sale Fabric On Order

   Found these pretty fabrics at Connecting Threads and ordered some for three more new nightgowns.  Now I have to make five new nightgowns.  That should be enough to last me a long, long time.

Time For More Fabric To Make New Nightgowns

   I've been making my own cotton nightgowns for about 20 years.  The other day one of my old nighties started to shred as I was putting it away (it was 8 years old) and I knew it was time to make a couple of new nighties.

   The pattern I use is, now you will probably laugh at me, Butterick 6886, which is a maternity pattern.  It's really comfortable.  The pattern makes a sleeveless nightie and a robe.  The nightgown is really simple to make, the hardest part for me is the bias tape binding around the neck and arm holes because I make my own binding from the same fabric and that takes some time, but it looks really nice.

   I just ordered two fabrics to make my new nighties.  These fabric were on sale and will be perfect for my project.  I'll share the finished nightgowns when they are done.

Birthday Kitties!

   Happy birthday to my kitty cats.  They turn 11 years old today.  My kitties are bengal litter mates and devoted to each other.

    Merlin is the oldest of the two and is a tri-color male.  He has lovely brown and caramel swirls in his fur.  His fur pattern is known as marble.  He weighs a little over 12 pounds.  He can be very vocal when he wants to wake me up to feed him in the morning.   Merlin doesn't sleep as much as his sister does and when he does sleep he likes to be by himself unless my lap is available.

    Taffy Morgana is brown spotted.  The rosettes in her fur pattern are very smudged and not as pretty and defined as some of the bengal cats out there.  Taffy usually comes in around 9.5 pounds.  Taffy loves her naps during the day and will lay down with me at night on the bed.  She will even get under the covers when she is really cold.

   They both have gorgeous black paw pads and light brown bellies with spots on them.  They are both fixed.  They are seven generations (F7) from the foundation cats so they have a very sweet nature.  They both like to drink from the kitchen faucet when I turn on a light steady stream.  They put their face under the water and let the water drip down the side of the face to their mouth.  It's fun to watch.

     They still play like kittens and love to chase each other back and forth through the house.  Taffy  likes to jump up on the top of the kitchen cabinets close to the ceiling.  Merlin doesn't go up there much any more.

   I gave them a little party this morning with their favorite wet food (Fancy Feast, any variety, or as it is known by cat people, kitty crack) for breakfast.

   Here is Merlin.

   Here is Taffy Morgana.

Upgrading My Front Flower Beds

  I have three flower beds in my front yard.  There is a short one on the right side of the front steps as you are looking at the house, there is a long bed on the left side of the steps as you are looking at the house and there is a circular bed I created in the center of my tiny front yard.  The long and short flower beds consist of loropetalum bushes in the back against the skirting of the house, then the Knock Out rose bushes, and the border plants are liriope.

The short bed.  It's really hard to see six rose bushes in this bed, but they are there.

The long bed.

The round bed.

    A few years ago I expanded my long front flower bed out about 3 feet so I could make room for more Knock Out Rose bushes.  I love Knock Out Roses and they do very well in my sandy soil.  I really enjoy the flowers and my plants flower from April until well into November.  In the process of expanding my front flower bed I had to relocate all the liriope plants.  It was a pain and I didn't quite finish the job.  I left 5 liriope plants in their original spots and I finally moved them the other day.

   This is the placement for the new plants.  I wasn't sure I could fit all ten of the roses in this section, but I made it.

   Here they are in their new home.  Some of the new plants are interspersed with older plants so I marked them with a white piece of fabric to make it easier to find them while I water them in the next six months.

    My next gardening project will be moving some of the plants in the circular bed to make some room for more rose plants.  I have three drift roses spread out in too large a space, they are circled in the picture below.  I will be moving two of the drift roses closer to the one in the center so I can add more Knock Out roses in this bed.  Wow, I didn't realize how really bad my grass looks.  That will be a project for next year.  I don't like to mow anyway.

 

My First Hexagon Block For My Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt Top.

   I have to make 34 more of these for my quilt top.  This quilt top will definitely take me a while but it's a lot of fun to make.  I love the scrappy flower center, the third round looks like cement pavers in the garden, and the fourth round is the green grass growing around the pavers and the flowers.  This is my Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt in progress.