Today is the 1st of February, and I'm already feeling so much more cheerful. January always feels about 3 months long, then suddenly February arrives, and it feels like it's only a few weeks until Spring, which it is, and everything just looks brighter. I'm also feeling very pleased with myself, as I have now finished my second quilt top of the year so far, and basted it, plus I've already started cutting out quilt number 3! :-) I am determined this year to use up some of my stash, so all 3 quilts are made with fabric that I've had for a while, and had resisted cutting into until now.

Quilt number 2 was made with one of my favourite shapes, hexagons. I just love the way hexagons look, and as I love bees, they do remind me of honeycomb. This time it was technically half hexagons, which are a sort of cheats way of doing hexagon quilts without Y seams, but they can also be arranged in other patterns too. You can see all my cut hexies below, and the colours are just so fresh and beautiful. This was a fabric range by Dashwood Studios, and I think it was all from the Fly Away collection, but there may be a few co-ordinating fabrics from other collections sneaked in there too.

After a little play with the hexies, I decided on the friendship braid design, but I didn't wan't to just have lines of braid, as I felt it would be too much, so I've bordered each of them, and added a line of horizontal hexies across the top and bottom. I really think it makes the design and colours stand out :-)

Here is is all basted, and now I just have to decide how to quilt it. Note: I have spray basted it AND pinned it for extra security, but if I was only pinning it, I would have used lots more pins!

As I didn't want to start quilting yesterday, but did want to be getting on with something, I have cut up 15 fat quarters of sweet Love me, Love me not fabric by Lewis and Irene into 5 inch squares. I'm not sure how I'm going to lay this out yet, maybe just a classic patchwork 9 patch, or a tossed 9 patch, or maybe snowball the corners, who knows, but I'll enjoy playing around with them, and the mice are absolutely adorable :-) I would also like to point out my new cutting mat in the photo, which is bright pink, and is making me very happy! I was having a problem with my Olfa rotary cutter too, where the blade has started wobbling around. I have had it for a while, and maybe I did something to it, but it was getting frustrating when it wobbled during cutting, so I decided to get a new one. This is an unbranded one from Amazon, but it was purple (much nicer than yellow) and the reviews looked ok, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's actually brilliant so far, and came with a titanium coated blade which is still going strong, so I haven't tried to change it yet and see if my Olfa blades fit, but if not I would happily buy the blades that it came with. Cutting is now so much more enjoyable with pretty coloured accessories :-)