My Mum told me a little while ago that she was hand-piecing hexagons.  I assumed that she was paper-piecing little hexagon shapes to one another.  I was wrong – she was hand-stitching these!

Aren’t they wonderful! Mum has made around 25 so far, and is aiming at around 50. Then she’ll work out how she wants to assemble them – butted together, with sashing, in rows with diamond shapes inbetween, etc etc. There are actually loads of possibilities! Check out how pretty this one is:

and this one:

and this one too:

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Completely opposite to me, my Mum doesn’t stash fabric. She is just buying more fat eights within the same civil war reproduction theme as she needs them, and is adding to her hexagons. When she runs out, she buys a little more. The hand-piecing makes all those seams intersect perfectly – as does the careful use of templates and tracing and marking. Mum, I am very impressed!

We are still the house of illness, although my two little girls seem to be finally improving a little. They’ve barely eaten since Saturday, when their gastro symptoms first appeared, and yesterday morning we even needed to take a little trip into the Children’s hospital for some oral rehydration (luckily we didn’t need to move onto intravenous fluids). It’s made for very broken and sleepless nights (they sleep in my bed with me near our ensuite when they are sick) and a considerable amount of washing and cleaning. Thank goodness for disinfectant! I’ve not seen the two of them so sick before, so I’m very relieved that things are starting to get a little better. Although the doctors have said to pretty much write off the entire week for them to recover. So much for week two of the school “holidays” – but the main thing is that they are starting to improve. It is so worrying and awful when your children are sick – and I know that this is nothing compared to the burdens that some parents carry. Gives a bit of perspective to a number of things in life.  And makes me appreciate the trials and worries that my Mum went through parenting my brother and me anew as well – thanks for everything Mum!

But being confined to the house should mean that I can do a little more sewing and crocheting as they improve! Just trying to be a little Pollyanna-ish…