Hexies afoot!

My mess of hexies are coming along quite nicely. In fact, I only have ten or eleven left to make to get an even hundred:



So, rather than do something sensible like trying to find ten more pieces of fabric to stitch into a hexie shape, I decided to lay them out and see if they would play with each other. I'm fortunate in having a drop-leaf coffee table that was a hand-me down from my grandparents. It opens up to almost 3 feet wide with the leaves up, which is just right for laying out an infant quilt:


Of course, if you leave your neat tidy rows of pieces out overnight, you're likely to come back to this the next morning:
Not to mention that it's bloody awkward not to be able to get to the futon, what with the leaves open and such.

So I roll out my trusty puzzle keeper and re-align my little beauties:


The puzzle keeper is one of the unsung heroes of small space quilting. It's not without it's limitations, but it's incredibly helpful in what it can do for relatively little cost. It's cons - it's not white or beige, and some quilters cannot bear to see their work framed by black, it has limited dimensions, and with paper piecing, your pieces can shift a bit when it is being rolled up (particularly if you use cardstock pieces rather than soft paper).

Oh, but it's pros: a lightly flocked surface that offers a little tension, the ability to store the fiddly bits for a small quilt without taking up precious space on the design wall, and the ability to roll up and cart away or store with ease, and the inflatable 'core' helps ensure that you don't get many wrinkles in your blocks as you roll them up.


And it can be stored neatly under the table, as needed, which you would be able to see if Miss Morganna Morganadanna would stop being quite so curious about the doings afoot: