Third Time's a Charm!

One of my friends from my Little Bits Miniature Quilt Group has been battling cancer for several months.  This woman is a go-getter and cancer has not slowed her down in the least - well maybe just a little bit.  She belongs to several guilds in the valley and was a founding member of most of them.  She belongs to several other types of groups as well and volunteers her time and talents in ways too numerous to count.  In all of her service to others and her busy, busy life, she has made many, many friends - also too numerous to count.  So when she became ill, she called in the troops, and her army of quilting buddies has been helping her finish up some of her nearly done projects.  Quilts and projects have been flowing in and out of her house, some to be quilted, some to have bindings put on, one friend even finished piecing a beautiful Bargello quilt for her.  I got to see the finished top at the "party" at Mary's house on Valentine's Day.  It was quite the Show and Tell!

Mary and I share a common interest in Brazilian Embroidery, so she asked me to take some hexagons that she had embroidered and put them together into a wall hanging for her daughter.  This quilt and I had issues with one another from the start, but it finally worked out.  The reason I say "third time's a charm" is because I ended up putting the quilt top together three times!  The first time, I ended up coming home with only six of the seven blocks.  I kept thinking how great it would be if only there were seven blocks and not six.  When I called Mary's house, her daughter told me there were seven blocks, that one fell on the couch on my way out!

Halleluja! I went and picked up the block, picked apart the quilt and put it together again with plain white hexagons in between.  That second attempt is pictured above.  It just looked like a vast amount of white, with these tiny, beautiful Brazilian embroidered blocks that got lost in that sea of white.  Plus there were many puckers due to my inadequate inset-seam piecing skills.
So apart it came again!  I watched a couple of episodes of Downton Abbey which made the seam ripping go by faster :)
I remembered reading an article in American Quilter recently, that I was so impressed with I cut it out and saved it.  I dug that article out, made sure I trimmed the hexagons to exactly the same size and began again, armed with these great instructions.

The finished result is pictured above.  I quilted it with feathers and it has a batik binding.  Mary and her daughter wanted an all white background, but I think the smaller size shows off the embroidered pieces much better.  So it was delivered on Valentine's Day along with several other quilts from several other friends.  Like I said there was quite a party going on!

Here is a picture of Mary and I at one of our famous Little Bit's birthday luncheons several months ago :)