Tuesday 18 November 2014

Plans for a hexagon quilt of my own

All this quilting on a hexagon quilt has really peaked my interest in making a hexagon quilt of my own.  I went online to check out different layouts.  I wanted to stay with a period layout, so nothing extremely complicated.  Something more traditional.  I was very surprised at all the different images you could find online.  Some basic layout to some really modern ones.  I think the layout would only be limited by one imagination.

This following picture was a layout that I found of an antique quilt.  After finding this one I kept looking and found even more of the same.  The only difference was that the diamonds online were of a single row of hexagons and one of that had three rows.  I am sure in this wide world of quilters, that I will not be the only person to make one with a double row of hexagons, but I didn't see any yet.


All of this is going to be possible because of the extra pieces I was given by my cousin.  I received the hexagon diamonds, a lot of extra singular hexagons and all the small squares pre-cut that were cut to make more hexagons.  Below is on of the hexagon diamonds.  They are all scrappy fabrics.  Some are older and most are from the 40s-50s.  I have to dismantle these diamonds to reshape the hexagons and change the centre hexagon to yellow.


I am a visual person.  I plan in my head for the most part, working out all the kinks and when I am ready to commit I will draw it out in good copy to confirm my thoughts will actually work.  In this case the drawing helped me to note that going across my quilt from, left to right, I have to have an odd number of full sized diamond and end with a half diamond in order to make the florets end in the right spot, to complete the inner border.  For the height of the quilt I can make the quilt however many full diamonds I want so long as I end with a half diamond.  In this quilt the diagonal corners will be mirror images.

In this diagram you can substitute any colour scheme you want.  For me I am making mine scrappy.  The only three colours that will be constant will be, one the white/off-white for the grid between the diamond and in the inner border between the florets, two the yellow that I am going to use for the centre hexagon of both the diamonds and the florets, and thirdly the purple/lilac colour for the two small rows of hexagons that run along side the floret inner border.  That leaves all the blue space which will be scrappy like in the photo above.


On Monday evening before heading out to pick up my daughter from work I had about 30 minutes to start cutting up some hexagon patties to make my hexagon English paper piece quilt.  In the picture below you can see I am using the specialty ruler that I bought a while ago, anticipating making a hexagon quilt.  You can also see the yellow that I am going to use for the centre hexagons.  The lilac I am going to use is the same solid fabric I am using for the centres of the Dresden plate blocks shown in an earlier post.  

Tomorrow is Wednesday and so I have a quilt bee meeting.  That is when my friend Carol is going to bring me the off-white for the grid of hexagons.  The off-white is called winter white.  It is white enough to look bright white, but off a bit so that the old vintage fabrics do not look dingy.  For now I need to continue to cut hexagons and some rectangles of yellow so that I will have some handwork to do in my grab and go bag.





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