The Hexathon quilt with stars and flowers

When I chose the yellow fabric for the background of the first block, I envisioned a lot of the blocks would be star patterns and always intended the setting to be a starry sky.  Then one of the earliest designs looked like it would make a nice flower, so that was a step away from the plan.  And then something went totally awry when I came home with a fat quarter of a lively floral print that had all the colors I was using.  So I have a melding of the stars and flowers with the final product.

The palette started with a set of fat quarters Joyce gave me for Christmas.  I thought the colors would make a very lively baby quilt and since she's going to have some grandchildren some day, that was the intended purpose for these blocks as I made them.   There were a couple of blocks I didn't like very much after I made them, but once that floral became the setting fabric, I decided I could include them after all.

This photo of the back shows my quilting plan.  When I did all the block outline stitching, I also outlined all the plain yellow background pieces, so some of the hexagon blocks have additional quilting lines in them.  I changed my mind about quilting each block per the piecing once I got all of that done, and went with a star-flower to simplify things.

The backing is pieced with this gradient blue and green and the lattice that I used for the middle border. Norris says he likes the starry sky fabric which is also used for the binding.

Westering Women and the Hexathon is over

My Westering Women block for October - I wanted to emphasize the star points, and have them light colored.  Then I thought I needed a bright fabric for contrast, so the little lattice print came in to the mix, and  seemed to want to be in small pieces. 

The last hexathon block was a complicated one and I only need 25 blocks for my setting.  These are my final three.  You get a sneak peak at my setting fabric with a couple of these - I used these as "leaders and enders" for the Westering Women block, forgetting that I hadn't photographed all the blocks yet.  (The setting fabric on the lower left corner of this one is not yet sewn on, but the block looked sad with a missing corner.)  The hand-dyed fabric is from Vicki Welsh.

I used foundation paper piecing for this block - this set of gradient hand-dyes is also from Vicki.

And my final block - I should try to fix a couple of those Y-seams.  I was running low at this point in the Hexathon!  But I love the combination of Vicki's shibori dyed points and the commercial batik.

With a jump start on the setting of these, I should have this colorful little quilt put together soon.  The Westering Women quilt has two more blocks to go and I don't have a setting plan for them.  My Civil War quilt blocks have been finished for over a year and I do have a setting design and all the fabric purchased.  I just haven't had the motivation to see that quilt finished?

Westering Women and Hexathon blocks for September

I just don't upload to the computer as often as I used to - here are my quilting efforts for the block programs for September

The Westering Women block was called "Sage Bud for Fort Laramie."  I thought I was done using that pale blue fabric that makes up the buds, but this one called for it.

 The brown stripe was a shirting fabric I purchased probably in the late 1970's.  I cut a shirt for myself out of it and never made it.  After my mother died, I found the pieces, still pinned to the pattern and took it home and decided to use it for quilting.  This was the first time using it in large pieces - the wrinkles did not iron out of it.  I may simply have to quilt it heavily to disguise it.

And here are four hexathon blocks that I don't have much to say about.  This first one was nice and easy and I think Vicki Welsh's hand dyed stripe makes it exciting: 

 

I can't really say the "nice and easy" part about these next two, though the second one also benefits from two of Vicki's hand dyes.

This last one though is a variation on one of the earlier blocks and also has Vicki's fabric for two of the three fabrics (the paler blue green was a commerical hand dye).  That particular week's block included a curved applique element, as though laid over the six points of the star shape featured in many of these hexagon blocks and I didn't think it would be all that effective in my brights.  So an easier choice helped me stay current with the program:

HIP HIP HOORAY I recently figured out how to set these colorful blocks!  My original thinking would have had an alternate hexagon or other shape out of a dark dark blue, perhaps flecked with yellow or white or with little stars on it.  But a couple of weeks ago, I helped in a volunteer effort to stuff the goodie bags for the attendees of Quilters Take Manhattan, a fundraising program for the Quilt Alliance that took place late in September.  For my few hours of work, I was rewarded with some of the fabric donations, and after washing them all, the fat quarter piece went up on my design wall to ponder for a different purpose.  Pretty quickly I could see it worked well with these blocks and promptly ordered some more. It's a choice not within my usual style at all, but then, these blocks are also in that category.

Some catching up with block programs

I got more behind on the Hexathon blocks preparing for my trip to Chicago than I realized.  I finally finished four of these before the pattern for the fifth one came out last week.  Here they are, in whatever order Blogger decided they should be in, which has nothing to do with anything I can figure out.

This one I pieced traditionally.  It's was not easy, though it doesn't have that many pieces.  Lots of scrappy pinks and magentas from that batik scraps collection I was given.

This one I just finished today. It too was traditionally pieced.  It was much easier than the one above.  Those fabrics were hand-dyed by Vicki Welsh.

This next has foundation-paper-pieced triangles so it went together pretty easily in spite of the oddly shaped pieces. The turquoise blue is also from Vicki - the darker is a commercially dyed fabric.

I also foundation paper pieced this block - it was quick and could have used up more batik scraps, but I decided I wanted these turquoises and I didn't have enough of that in the scraps.  The semi-solid is also from Vicki.

I never want to attempt this at 8 inches again. The gray fabrics around the star were batik scraps, the other colored fabrics are from a selection of batik fat quarters Joyce gave me. I decided to try my hand at a color concept I read about years ago.  I think I got what I was going for, though you can't see it in this photo - the yellow is really much brighter than it appears.  And though this is far from perfect, some of what appear to be wrinkles are actually just the prints.

Ready to see what next week brings, I went back through all the old posts on Barbara Brackman's blog and wrote down the options for simpler blocks she gave us with some of those - I'm going to try to be more sensible than to do this sort of block again!

And finally, there was a nice 12 inch block for the Westering Women project.  This is called Chimney Rock.  I decided to use the medium gray fabric to look rocky - it will give me a place to quilt but looks a little sad in the corners with the snazzy stripes.  Lots of Y seams in this block, but at this scale, the piecer has a little wiggle room.

Hexathon Blocks 12 and 13 -

Unlike some of the group, I'm not using the names of the blocks or the descriptions of William Morris to guide my fabric choices, I'm just trying to get the blocks made with this mix of very colorful fabrics, and to include either the solid yellow or a fabric with yellow.  Here are the two latest blocks.

This first block was pretty intimidating, so I used foundation paper piecing - and did not get the last couple of intersections lined up as I should have.  I might or might not try to fix that.  The fabrics are busy and these pieces are tiny.

The second block for this week was far simpler to construct.  The only challenge was to choose a pair of fabrics I liked together - deciding not to use the solid yellow this time.

Hexathon blocks

Paraphrasing one of those letters I recently transcribed, I'm just not as good at keeping up with the blog "as I used to was"  Here are the last three of these hexagon blocks.  This one used a couple of fabrics Joyce gave me for Christmas over a year ago and a little scrap of a yellow printed batik.

This one used three of the small scraps from friends -

And the last one was more of the fabrics from Joyce

None of these were too awfully hard to piece - the second and third had no "y" seams and the first had only one.  Our leader keeps warning us there are some challenges ahead.

Hmm, I seem to have reoriented some of the blocks when I photographed them. No matter - none are directional.

Hexathon - Weeks 5 and 6

Seems I forgot to post last week's block - so here are two - the first was not too bad.

But this week's was a challenge - I thought I would be very clever and pick a pair of fabrics that would make it hard to tell if I succeeded in getting those points to meet in the center. I just closed my eyes, stitched, and it worked!

Hexathon - Week 4 - Box Hill

The block for this week was pretty complicated, but we were given the option to create one big tumbling block, or a number of them (hard to count but maybe it's 7 plus edges of others).  I figured out that last week's design, without the circle in the center, could be recolored Tumbling Blocks style and I would not have to go crazy trying to machine piece it.

This has three Tumbling Blocks, plus edge pieces and did not require any new templates.

Since the camera is making my yellow appear to be off white, I put all the blocks up on my design wall, which has a whitish background - now you can see I'm using yellow - though it's actually brighter than this, too.

Hexathon - Block 3 - Camelot Star

For a machine piecer, this one would have been a little too fussy, even with the dense weave of the batiks I decided to use, so I machine appliqued the center.

I don't know why the bright yellow background fabric came out so pale in this photo.  The batiks I cut the flower petals from came from my friend Ellen's scraps, by way of my friend Alice when Alice moved and downsized her quilting stash.  The pieces are not big enough to meet in the center, so the purple flower just hangs out there over a small irregular-shaped hole.  Of course, if I'd hand-pieced the block, there would have been no fabric underneath it either.

Hexathon - block 2 "Crystal Palace"

This was a straightforward block to make - I did make sure I cut Vicki's fabulous Shibori dyed fabric, purchased for the Grandmother's Choice I made a couple of years ago, so that a line created by the tie made a nice little hexagon in the center.

I think these stripes make a very nice "crystal" effect, indeed!

Hexathon - block 1 of a series

I'm not exactly committing to doing all of them.  Most quilters have hand piecing skills and use English Paper Piecing for hexagon quilt designs, but I'm stubbornly attached to using a sewing machine for everything I can. (I tend to move easily into hand and wrist issues with hand sewing, so I save my hands for knitting).

This is a Barbara Brackman block of the week program for 26 weeks.  She's going to be talking about the William Morris designs and influences and the models will be made with William Morris reproduction fabrics.  But plenty of people will be using those. I chose instead to try this as a quilt for a future family baby - Joyce gave me stacks of bright colorful batiks and hand-dyes from Vicki Welsh for Christmas last year - Vicki has a brand new website called Colorways by Vicki Welsh where she sells her hand dyed fabrics, glass pieces, and hand made soap - check it out! http://www.colorwaysbyvicki.com/ 

The block is pretty flat which is an accomplishment - and must be pretty accurate a hexagon, since I started with a photo of the hexagon with two flat sides top and bottom- then I rotated it 60 degrees and cropped, then turned it 60 degrees and cropped again to get it surrounded in black with most of the points showing. I wanted to crop it so the odd pointy corners and fraying yellow fabric are not distracting.

The solid fabric I used for a background is a solid yellow sateen and it does fray. If I make some number of these - probably not all 26, I might or might not use it to tie the blocks together.  The designs will not all have a background area.