The Quilt I Didn't Intend to Make

I made a new friend in the Blogosphere this past week. Lara over at BuzzinBumble and I connected and traded comments on our respective blogs - and I found this quilt that she made based on a Kaffe Fassett pattern.

I was thinking that my stack of Kona Solids would look great as a quilt in that pattern.

When I got them out of the box and sorted, I ended up with lights, mediums, and darks, instead of lights and darks.

Well what can you do with three tones instead of two? Hexagons. Duh.

At this point, I really have no idea where this quilt is going, except that it looks nothing like I intended it to look. However, I can most definitely say it was inspired by Lara's quilt.

This is as far as I got last night. I'll keep making the triangles out of the three different tones and maybe mix up the order of colors a bit and see where it leads. By the way, talk about finicky. I'm using 1.5 inch strips for these. My first set finished just a skosh too large and the second set after slightly adjusting my seam allowance was a smidge too small. Ugh.

For the first time this month, I worked on Maggie the Messmaker during my lunch breaks.

As of August 1

As of August 28

I won't be able to work on her tomorrow since we are closing early due to Labor Day Holiday (Yay!). Plenty of time to work on my projects at home then!

Linking up to Mop Monday@Tweety Loves Quilting and Lets Bee Social@Sew Fresh Quilts

A Crafty-Ful Day

Well, as I had hoped I've been able to spend most of the day sewing. And it has been so much fun.

I finished all the blocks for my Mod Mosaic Quilt. There are only six but thats okay. I wanted to make a smaller quilt this time. I'm trying to decide what color to set the blocks into, my options are grey or purple. I'm leaning towards purple. I know a lot of modern quilters like to set their blocks on a grey background but somehow I just can't get into the vibe.

 The colors just seem to pop so much better on purple.

I also tackled my Cubes & Illusions quilt. This was a little tricky, figuring out how to set the blocks without having to make y-seams (which I'm horrible at). First I choose a background and layout...

 And then very carefully cut 60 degree triangles and half-hexagons, assembling block on the diagonal until they all fit together. Yay for straight seams! I thought about making the background striped and then appliqueing the blocks onto it but I really wanted the blocks to fade into the background and the stitching around the applique would have prevented the illusion.

And Voila, my finished wall hanging quilt top....

Last but not least, I selected the fabrics for Nana's Quilt.

Oh hey.. the day is only half over. I've still got six hours before I have to go to bed for work tomorrow!

Kaleidoscope in Outer Space II

By Kaelyn Angelfoot

It took almost three hours to settle on a final arrangement for my kaleidoscope quilt. There were problems with the colors. Part of the space fabric was a teal Saturn-like planet surrounded by lavender. Because of the way the blocks were cut out, these teal and lavender creations just didn't seem to mesh well with the rest of the quilt. I was unable to come up with a satisfactory arrangement that included them. After removing them from the layout, I came up with the following design which I am very happy with.

 

Final kaleidoscope quilt arrangement

I am piecing the quilt together in long strips, very carefully, as this is not a forgiving block. Small errors result in large issues with combining the various blocks. I was forced to discard a couple of blocks that had errors in the seams which caused the hexagon to be less that 360 degrees when completed. At the top and bottom of each strip I have added a black triangle that I will trim to make a straight edge. I was also unable to come up with a satisfactory arrangement that would allow me to make two quilts - there just aren't enough blocks. This one will be a lap-size when completed.

One thing I strongly recommend is taking pictures (like the one above) of your final layout. I have already had to refer to this a couple times to make sure I'm putting the hexagons in the correct order while piecing.