In a flurry of work, I pieced together all of my Hexie Dreams quilt in time for my Memorial Day weekend deadline, but then came to the realization that I would have to add a border, else sacrifice too many of my fussy cut hexies. At first, since this was a bit of a letdown, I took a frustrated pause from working on it. Once I did the math, though, I realized I could very well get the border attached in time for a vacation I have coming up, in which I could potentially drop it off to gramma. So another flurry of work commenced.

And honestly, the original delay was the best outcome because I had some embroidery ideas I wanted to add, as well as adding a few interfacings for the thinner fabrics. There were about 45 of these – I didn’t count, and that is a total guess, but there were a lot of concerning ones.

I had it signed already but wanted to get my gramma’s signature, too, and I was able to get that whilst visiting over the holiday weekend. If you noticed, I can explain my mentality of not perfecting the stitches of “pieced by” or “quilted by”: on one hand, I don’t mind their wonkiness as it is a record of just how utterly over this quilt I am. Yet, on the other, I spent so much time on it, this lack of attention to detail at the near end is a bit ingratiating, if I do say so myself. However, note that I did not rip out the stitching and try again. I think we can all agree on which part of me won out! By the way, my gramma saw this quilt and commented on my loose stitching. I promptly told her that’s because it’s my first time hand quilting but I had trust that her quilting skills would rescue my quilt. The faith of a granddaughter, am I right? Plus, along the way, I learned that a whip stitch is far, far superior to the hidden stitch I had been using. So that looseness, itself, is a record of my learning a better technique.

I wanted to add the dates for posterity’s sake. Do I know it will be finished in 2024? Absolutely not! Even though it appears time stamped for next year, I’ve told my gramma that I have no expectations of a finish date. If it takes longer, I think it would kind of be fun to “scratch out” the 4 and add whatever year is necessary, in another color, even. Red, maybe! A silly record to show that this thing has taken me way longer than I possibly imagined. (And, let’s be real – there’s no way that I would get the binding finished this year even if somehow gramma whizzed through her side of things. )

Then I thought about historic quilts, and how sometimes the place was noted. So, of course I did that – not that I expect this to last into the great future, but one never knows, do they? (For privacy, the towns are wiped out, but you get the idea.)

And this added border (which is the same fabric as the backing) will let me do a scalloped edge, which just increases the fun factor another notch. Even if binding will be a little more gruesome – not to mention the issue of figuring out how to deal with an asymmetrical scallop. I just like to do things to the tune of my own song.

To celebrate what this quilt means to me, in part, I gave myself a little blue ribbon. Cute, right?

I did meet this second deadline, if you were wondering, but I did not have time to deliver it to my gramma. Will I wait until our next visit, or fedex it? That is the question. And so there you have it – the next update will be for its completion, so all I can say is check back here for an update when it happens!