It is Spring!

It is Spring....or so they say! With the temperature sitting at freezing it doesn't feel that way but the arrival of the robins and red-wing blackbirds is a sure fire indication that Spring is indeed here.

This is a little Spring time quilt that I made as part of my Guild's Paint Pot Challenge. The organizers got a bunch of paint chips from the home improvement store and put them in an empty paint pot. We each reached into the pot and pulled out a chip. The challenge was to make a small quilt that featured the paint chip colour and the name of our quilt had to be the name of the paint chip! It was great fun and challenged us to work with colours we might not have ordinarily used. That was the case for me but imagine my surprise when I discovered I did had that colour in my stash! The name of my paint chip and my quilt is Rosy Outlook!

Rosy Outlook by Karen H  2012

14 1/2" x 17 1/2"

I used my Sakura Pigma pens to add details to the birch tree trunks, veins to the leaves and  feathers to the fabrics that I used to make the bird. It's legs were drawn on the quilt after the bird was attached.

Today I thought I would answer a reader question about the path and share a few more rosettes for my Birds in the Loft quilt. I love both of these rosettes! The green middle in the first is another treasured fabric; there isn't much left!

The blue fabric has been in my stash a long time and I think I have enough for a couple of individual hexagons and then it will be gone, gone, gone!

Now for the reader question/ I was asked why I am adding path hexagons to only one side of the rosette and not the other.

I want the hexagons to fit together with a single round of path hexagons. If I add them on both sides there will be a double row of path hexagons. Think of it like sashing between square blocks. There is only one sash between two blocks and this holds true with hexagon rosettes (and diamonds). It is important to understand that if you have two hexagons between rosettes they will not line up. Instead a slope will develop. I wrote about it here. If there is a full round of path hexagons around each rosette they would look like the rosettes on the left.

A picture speaks a thousand words so here are a few pictures to explain what happens. In this picture two rosettes have the five path hexagons stitched to them. When I put them together notice how they fit nicely and will stay in a nice straight line.

If I add path hexagons to both sides this is what would happen when I try to put them together. Notice the slope has developed!

If you want your blocks to be in a straight line the path must be an odd number. Birds in the Loft will have a single path. My Value Proposition quilt has a triple path.

Another way to straighten rosettes is to add a small diamond between. The diamond is simply on third of a hexagon. I wrote about constructing, deconstruction and reconstructing hexagons here.

I used the diamond method of connecting the units in my quilt Butterscotch Ripple. It is another option for joining hexagon units!

I hope you enjoyed this blog entry. Until I post again, happy sewing!
Karen H