I struck gold!

If you are looking for my Grow Your Blog post and Giveaway please go here.

I've been working away on my Birds in the Loft hexagon quilt. The next round will be gold fabric. I had pretty much decided on the fabric and had cut the first 2 1/2" strip from which I would cut my hexagons. However I was at my local fabric shop and they had just received a few bolts of Jo Morton fabrics and I saw this soft, faded gold with hops. The pairs of hops will fit perfectly inside a 1" hexagon so this is the fabric I've decided that it wold be a perfect fit and what was even better was that it was on sale at $9/meter with an extra 40% off! I struck gold!

This is my diagram of my Birds in the Loft hexagon quilt with the gold round. I'm constructing this part of the quilt (the gold round, the white round and the olive round) off the quilt. There are two more rounds to go (a white round and another coloured round) and then these units and the filler pieces at the top, bottom and sides will be attached to the centre medallion.

Time to think about my next fabric choice for the coloured round. There are all sorts of possibilities . One of the quilts that is providing the inspiration for the medallion has a very dark round (you can see it here) but I think I would like something a little more lively!

I made a rosette for a post I wrote about hexagon sizes. You can read the post here. One of the hexagon rosettes was made of 1" hexagon and I've decided to use it in my quilt. I'll have to remove some of the off white hexagons so that it will fit. I cut a 2 1/2" strip of the brown plaid across the width of the fabric. The hexagons were not fussy cut however there was definitely a light side and a dark side so I made sure that the light sides were facing inward. It gives the look of fussy cuts without the effort. 

This is another finished rosette that will go in the quilt. Both fabrics are very old leftover bits in my stash. I love the brick red and turquoise combination. It just sings! Although it may not appear so at first glance, this red is a directional print. I made sure that the vines radiated out from the middle. Attention to this type of detail does make a difference. If you are using a subtle directional print such as this and you want to make sure that the print is going in the correct direction when you sew the blocks together here is a helpful tip: when you are affixing your papers to the fabric you can see the direction of the print so with a pencil mark an arrow on the paper on the hexagon to remind you of the direction of the print when you are sewing them together!

On Wednesday I hope to have an interesting hexagon tutorial for you. I'm pretty excited about it - I came up with the idea when I was playing around with my hexagons for Birds in the Loft. I can see all sorts of fun ways to use this idea and I'm sure that you will too!

So until Wednesday, happy sewing!
Karen H