Pattern Testing, Lozagons and a Beautiful Pen

I continue to work on the pattern testing for Missie of Traditional Primitives. I'll share pictures when she gives me the okay! I you like English paper piecing and the Dear Jane quilt then you'll be interested in Missie's quilt pattern! It isn't a large quilt - I think it will finish at about 65" which is a nice manageable size!

Last night I stitched together a block for my Lozagons quilt. You can read about the original quilt here.  The turquoise you see will act as the background fabric. I've made hexagon rosettes and I'll stitch one rosette at each spot where there is a turquoise hexagon on the block.

The result will be that the block will appear to have spokes as you can see in the picture of the original quilt below.

That's one block down and thirty to go! You can see my box of "noodles" which are the hexagons stitched into rounds. They are waiting to be turned into larger pieces!

My brother turns wood on a lathe and has made some really lovely seam rippers which he sold at the Quilt Show. He made these for Mom and me for Christmas. The seam ripper part comes out and gets tucked inside the wood handle when not in use.

Well I love the woods me uses and so he me made me a lovely pen made of buckeye burl. A burl is a round growth on a tree. The grain is very different from the trunk and it is full of eyes and swirls.

Here's a close-up of the burl in the seam ripper above. Pretty, isn't it? You can see more pictures of his seam rippers here.

And here is the pen he made for me. I love the colour of the wood, creamy gold and slate grey!

There were some small voids in the burl so he filled them with turquoise inlay. It is a tiny little detail and the kind of thing that makes the pens a little extra special! I love my pen!

Tomorrow I'll share more pictures from the quilt show! Until then happy sewing.
Karen H