Mouthy Stitches zippered pouch swap #1

2011 was my first year of swaps, bees and quilt-a-longs and I participated in a few and had a blast! Only problem is that I don’t end up with many finished projects, rather an assortment of blocks that may one day be quilts. Like most, I made a resolution this year not to bite off more than I can chew and to finish some big queen size quilts and keep them all to myself! I’ve even made a list to try and keep myself focussed – I’m just not game enough to share it 🙂

When I spotted the Mouthy Stitches zippered pouch swap I simply could-not-resist! Susan, Hadley and Cindy are hosting and they are all fab so I really wanted to play along…and a zippered pouch isn’t a big time commitment is it??
The 90 spots in the swap went in record time and I have never seen so many mosaics go up in so few days. The chatter and comments are amazing, such awesome participation! So every morning and every evening I am on there stalking my partner and commenting on all the group photos.

I’ve been wanting to play around with some paper pieced hexagons for a while and after studying my partner’s likes decided this would be a great project to try them out. I took a class with Sue Daley recently and had her papers and templates and a Sewline glue pen ready to go. Cutting the fabrics and gluing them to the papers came together really quickly and could easily become addictive. Whip stitching the hexies together takes a bit longer and took me a bit of getting used to. I teamed the hexies with some natural Essex linen and perle thread quilting.

I thought hexies on both sides might be a bit too much so decided to let the linen and some perle stitching be the feature on the back. The stitched hexagon has my partner’s first initial stitched in it so I have kept that hidden for now.

I’m really pleased with how it, however I feel quite nervous hoping my partner will like it. The group is producing some amazing work and my partner is showing plenty of skill in design and construction. It’s not due to go in the post for another week and then it has international shores to fly to so it may be a while before I find out. Fingers crossed!!