Hexagon showoff

 Another windy, cold, rainy day and the lake is wild

Two weeks ago my sister-in-law broke her collarbone.  Last weekend PH and I went to visit.  Joyce was looking ok after the shock of the accident and surgery and that day she could move her fingers!  So what does a quilter do?? She showed me a technique she just learned for making hexagons.  Her stamina wasn't long so we did this quickly.  I have a new camera (yay!) so some of the focus isn't right but you'll get the idea.  I know this isn't a new technique because she learned it on a crafty TV channel but it was new to me.  Hexies from circles.

 Someone in Joyce's bee gave everyone some Kaffe fabrics.  Joyce is not Kaffe.  She is batik. She knew she needed to make something from the fat quarters so as not to hurt the giver.  She decided on a table topper.  She's not used to these colors except for the very bottom aqua/teal one.  Working with these colors was way out of her comfort zone.

 She used the lid from a sour cream container.  "Be sure you say it's 4 inches," she said.  "Yup," I said, "8 ounces!"

 She outlined the circles ....

 and cut them out then folded them in half twice.

 Taking the teensiest one thread stitch in the middle of the circle

 ( this is where I messed up a bit on the picture)  Take another stitch at the top of the circle near the folded line 

 and pull it to the center

 First fold

 Now go back up to the top and take the teeniest stitch where the fold is

 and pull to the center (sorry about the out of focus)

 Repeat all the way around the circle at the top fold

 Go to the fold, take a tiny stitch

 and pull

 Keep going around doing the same

 at the end take the last stitch in the tip of the folds

 and pull to the center

 Put one holding stitch in the folds to hold it

Voila! If your first stitch in the middle of the circle is indeed one thread you won't see it from the front.

 Joyce sewed them together in rows....the top three, then four, then five, etc.

 Then she sewed the rows together in the "V" seams

 The back is very clean

 And if you are making a bed skirt or table topper you don't have to add the batting or back.  It's done!  And it lays really flat to the table so a cup of coffee or vase of flowers is secure.

Luigi's Freedom Ride

As a young boy in Tescano, Italy, Luigi Ferraro was given a bicycle by Jeremy Forsythe, a man passing through the village on the bike but who has an unfortunate meeting with a truck.  The bent, broken bike is repaired and rebuilt by the boy and a lifelong love for bicycles begins.

Luigi lives in Tescano  with his mother and uncle Cesare, the village blacksmith.  With his best and inseparable friend, Leonardo, the boys ride through the countryside every chance they get and become so expert at bikes that when  the war comes to the village, they are drafted into the bicycle corp where their job was to repair and keep ready the needed fleet of bicycles.  During the war, Luigi, Leonardo and now Jacob, a young Jew they met on the first day of their enlistment,  manage to stay together, are adopted into the resistance and Luigi falls in love.  But this isn’t a war story, not really.  It’s because of the war that decisions are made and people are met and promises made. 

This war makes Luigi dream of leaving Italy and seeing the world, his Freedom Ride.  He wants to go as far away on the map as he can and sets his sites on riding to Australia. 

This is Luigi’s story.  We all have one, as simple as our lives seem to be.  Luigi would say so of himself. But it is also a story so full of wonderful characters, some who never speak a word, who at first might appear to the reader to be nothing more than props but oh, they all have a role, they are as much a part of the story as Luigi.  This IS a story of curiosity, and love and hope and a jet-black Hercules Popular twenty-one inch Gent’s Roadster.

I absolutely loved this story. Loved, loved, loved it.