Hospital Hexies

I love the idea of Slow Stitching Sundays that some people in the QuiltyBlog world post about.  Slowing down, once a week with some hand sewing.  I love the "idea" but my Sundays never quite work out that way. Sunday is usually laundry, meal planning, list making and grocery shopping.  Almost never, sit and stitch.  But, lately I have been treated to a Slow Stitching Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday...  lots of days with time to stitch by hand, courtesy of a hospital stay for my younger daughter.  So, I have been making hexies!

My daughter, MonkeyNinja, age 8, has cystic fibrosis.  Hospital stays are becoming a pretty routine part of our lives.  We go in for 10 - 14 days at a time, usually only once a year.  While we are in she has procedures (Bronchoscopies and sinus surgeries, etc.) to assess the health of her lungs and sinuses, and she gets IV medications to help deal with bacteria that grow in the excessive mucus that her body produces due to CF.  She usually feels pretty "normal" health wise, and while she is restricted to her room, we can be "active" and have fun while we are in! It's not all bad.  And a two week stay usually buys us several months of pretty good health.

So, we had some advance notice of this stay.  I was able to cut up some OLD stash (most of it wasn't even purchased by me...I got it from a sister-in -law years ago after her mother- in-law died) into squarish pieces.  I also cut hexies from freezer paper following directions I found on-line somewhere.  Neat method where you accordion fold the freezer paper and staple in the middle of each hexie before cutting so you can accurately cut lots at once.

I made a little kit with needles, thread, pre-cut freezer paper and my scraps.  It fit into a nice little box, easy to pack and bring along.  I haven't had as much time to stitch as I thought I would.  We've been pretty busy with visitors, procedures, games, doing our nails, and reading (we have started the Little House books - LOVE).  We definitely make the most of our stays!  But during quiet times, and nervous times, it's been nice to have something to keep my hands busy.

In retrospect, I wish I had made my template a bit smaller.  I used a plastic hexagon template that was in a box of quilt supplies which someone gave me.  I did make the freezer paper pieces smaller by tracing a 1/2 inch in from each side of  the plastic, but, I should have gone even more. These are cute, but as I've been looking at project ideas on blogs and Pinterest, I find that I am drawn to the teeny tiny ones, like an inch on each side instead of an inch and a half.  I am sure I will do this again, though, because I would really like to  make some in fun, bright, modern fabric.

I don't even really know what these will  become.  For sure they will have to make lots of friends in order to become a quilt.  And that might not happen soon - maybe not until our next stay.  I keep having images of them arranged around low-volume centers in single flowers:

I really like this print.  So pretty.

And then maybe combined with some low volume flowers around centers in these colors.  We'll see.  This is much more of a long term project than a finish it up project.  A planned WIP, I guess.  The best part is probably playing with all the pretty little hexies to see how they look in different configurations.  Both of my daughters have had some fun with this the last few days.

Grandmother's Flower Garden

Kinda Chevron-y

Rows

I also just happened to notice that three of these pretties stacked up is equal to height of my current tablet cover, which I have been meaning to replace with something hand made.  So, that might happen.

We are winding down our stay, and looking forward to home.  And as much as I have enjoyed Slow Stitching, I am very eager to get back to my machine and all these ideas swimming in my head!

Happy Sewing,
Tami