Monday, August 17, 2015

More Hexagon Happenings

I've made three more "rounds" of hexagons for my rosette.  I used the quotation marks, because the hexagons don't go all around the center, and each round is only 2 or 3 hexagons. When the quilt is finished, it will look like other rosettes are sitting on top of this one.

The first round, if you remember, had the owls in them. I'm still not 100% sure I will be using this layout, but I think this sets off the center pattern and swirly fabric nicely.


For the second round, I decided to use the owls again.


This time, the owls get to be whole, without having their wings and ears clipped off. I added a piece underneath the owl to avoid having partial owls in the hexagon. I think repeating the fabric looks good this way and keeps the continuity from the previous round.

For the next "round", which is only two hexagons, I added this bright fabric.  It worried me to use it, but I really want this quilt to be bright and I really like this fabric.  This fabric is really was more the way I thought this quilt was going to go.  The muted color I started with was making this quilt very muted, which is all right for this small inconspicuous rosette, but I wanted to make sure it looked like it fit in the quilt.  This block is easy to make with just a few pieces and no y-seams, so I figured I could remake the hexagon if I couldn't make it work on this rosette.


I forgot to take a picture of the hexagons in the next and final round of this rosette, but you can see it in this layout. These Y seams caused some trouble. I think I might resort to hand piecing the ones with tricky y seams.  They looked horrible and I went to bed thinking I would have to remake the last two rounds, and maybe the center hexagon.  In the morning, I pressed them, and then they don't look so bad.

I tried different layouts, but I like this one the best for the rounds. By turning the bright fabric inward, and turning that last round so that the dark green is inward, it looks like the dark green would encircle the center, and the rosette looks more cohesive. I do think I will be turning the first round as shown in the photo above. I just need to take a photo of that so I can compare. Then I will put them together. Hopefully, these y seams won't be too bad with the whole hexagons.

I'm really glad I started with a relatively smaller rosette instead of the biggest one, so that I could learn from my mistakes.

In other quilty news, I've decided not to make the triangle quilt at this time.  Since that quilt was supposed to be scrappy, and since it is triangles, I think I should save it for later to avoid confusion and chaos.  This quilt already makes enough of a mess with fabric choices.  I thought about cutting extra fabric to use for the triangle quilt, but I'm not sure I won't need them for future hexagons. I have another leaders / enders idea which uses three fabrics, and all the pieces are the same size square.

Also to clean up the space, I finished the Irish chain quilt (added borders), and quilted it.  I need to add the binding, and hopefully will be able to show you a finished quilt next time.

6 comments:

O'Quilts said...

Well..now aren't u on quite a creative roll!! Awesome.

Mrs. Goodneedle said...

The owl/hexagon quilt is so cute; I love this optical illusion layout too! Well done. I, like you, try to avoid confusion and chaos whenever possible! ;)

Lucy | Charm About You said...

The centre fabrics create such a cool effect! Have fun with all your projects!

Ruth said...

Love the owls - a really nice touch!

Lorna McMahon said...

Those hexies are certainly coming along! Love the owls!

Tanya said...

The hexagon quilt is growing and looking great!