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Thursday, March 12, 2015

REWIND: Making it right


Welcome back to REWIND! Every now and then I "rewind" and republish one of my older posts that you may have missed! Today I'm going to share a post about how I changed the colour of one of the fabrics I used to make my Good Golly Miss Mollie hexagon quilt. The post is from May 2014.

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Making it right

I was putting off cutting the patches for one of my Godstone Grannies block because I just couldn't find the right fabric in my stash. I finally decided to take my own advice and make it right! I selected a fabric with a dark print on a pale grey background but I wanted something that had a yellow tint to it so that it would be a little softer and work with the yellow center. The solution? My Sakura Pigma pens! On the left you can see the fabric and above and below the hexagon block are a yellow pen and a black pen.



I used the yellow pen to soften the grey background and give it a soft, pale yellow tint. The black was used to darken the bottom edge of the hexagon and also to create a slight curve to create a secondary design. The hexagon on the left has been colour adjusted and the hexie on the right is "au naturel"! It is a subtle difference but that's all I needed.



In the next picture you can see that  the top three hexies have been altered and the bottom three are plain. I am much happier with the top three.



When all six are adjusted you can see the black shading around the center hexagon adds more visual interest!



So everything was going along smoothly until another problem arose! My yellow pen ran out of ink! But you know me.....problem/solution is my way of working! I knew I had a bottle of textile medium so I hauled it out along with my watercolour paints. I mixed up a little paint with the textile medium and did a test hexie. The hexagon on the left is au naturale, the middle hexie is tinted with the pen and the hexie on the right is painted with the textile medium and watercolour paint. The painted hexie is a little darker than the hexie coloured with the pen but I think I like it better and it works with the center. So I'll baste all of the hexagons, paint them and then heat set the paint to make it permanent!




So if you find that you need a particular fabric for a block but don't have it in your stash, experiment! You might just come up with something really special!

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So that's how I "made it right"! Are you curious to know what the  block looked like? Well here it is! The addition of yellow fit with the warm feel of the block and of the quilt!


I wrote about another way I "made it right" here. The fabric needed just a little help to make it work! The acorns had a white spot (see upper left corner) that just didn't work in my quilt so I got rid of them (see lower right corner)! You'll see pictures of the finished quilt in the post.


I hope you've enjoyed this issue of REWIND. I reply to every comment so if you don't receive an email from me it means you are a no reply blogger and I have no way to contact you unless you include your email address in the comment.

Until I post again, happy sewing!
Karen H

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the rewind. I've just discovered your beautiful blog, so missed the original posting. You make your stunning fussy-cut hexies look easy. Thanks for sharing one secret. I wonder how permanent heat set watercolors are. Do you think they might bleed when washed?

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  2. How clever you are! Brilliant post...

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  3. Amazing solutions you find for everything, I do prefer the yellowy tint and the block is gorgeous. As always you use colours that I would never think of putting together. thanks for all your interesting tips.

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  4. Thank you for all the amazing tidbits that you give out .Most of them i would never have taught off..I look forward to your post just to see what you put togather next..I wish i had half your imagination for what colors to put togather .Keep it comming i am always learning something new.

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  5. I remember this one and am still tickled how you corrected that fabric. The later is new to me, so I'll go to see it now. Thanks, Karen.

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