Another alphabet quilt update

I apologize for sort of dropping of the map this past week! I just started a new job (I'll be working at my favorite NGO, Amnesty International! Yay!) so my mind has been on things other than crafting this week. But I did want to show you what's on my living room floor at this moment:

Progress! That's all the background pieces for my hexagon alphabet quilt, cut out and prepped. Finally! I was getting so sick of cutting and gluing a thousand shades of white and off-white...

I laid all my pieces out in order to get a feel for what the background will look like when it's all sewn together, and to check that I had a balance of solids and patterned pieces that I was happy with. I'm hoping to keep the background interesting, without detracting focus from the letters themselves. Do you think I've found a decent balance between the two?

I will be taking a bit of a break from this quilt for the coming month, as I have another patchwork project (do you remember the secret project I mentioned a while ago?) that is demanding my attention. But my hexie quilt is never far from my thoughts! I'm really excited about how it's looking so far - I'm hoping I will still be this excited about it once it's completed. I can't wait to begin stitching it together!

Happy 2009!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a wonderful holiday. I certainly did - and I got lots of crafty Christmas presents! Fabric, books, a glue gun (can you believe I haven't had one until now!) and paints and supplies to try carving lino. I'm looking forward to using some of my new supplies in my crafts this year.

One of the presents I got from Keith was this great book - a huge encyclopedia of embroidery stitches with great and detailed pictures!

I couldn't wait to get started on some embroidery so this is what I designed to practice some new stitches:

I'm sorry about the poor photo - can't wait 'til the light returns here to the far north! :-) I promise I'll get a better shot of the finished piece. Anyway, I designed a little sampler to help me try some new stitches, and I wanted it to be something inspirational for the new year... I scanned the pattern for you if you'd like to make one too! There are a lot of straight lines to make trying new stitches really simple - if you do decide to make a new year's sampler yourself, I'd love to see your result!

Click for a larger view of the pattern: