What to do with all the little beauties?

If you've been following my blog you know I have a giveaway running right now. I've just published five new booklets of hexagons designs in my Craftsy shop. You have until Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 09:00 EST (that's 9:00 a.m. EST) to enter. You could be one of five lucky winners of one of my Easier Than Pie & Beyond booklets of hexagon designs. To enter simply leave a comment on this post telling me which booklet is your favourite! The designs look complicated but are so easy you won't believe it! If you can baste a hexagon and sew a straight line you will have no problem mastering these elegant designs!

I've promised to show you what I did with my hexagon rosettes made using my Easier Than Pie & Beyond methods and designs. So let me start off by showing you what a bunch of them looked like tacked to a small design wall. When selecting fabrics they were not made to go together; they are all made with scraps and leftover strips of fabric. I made them simply to illustrate my designs.  Each one is a little gem but I think that when they are clustered together so closely they loose a little of their sparkle. They need some distance between them in order to shine.

So what is the solution? Well I could have cut squares of fabric and appliqued each one to a square and then simply stitched the squares together with or without a sashing OR I could have surrounded each rosette with another round of hexagons and then sew them together with a path of hexagons. Rather than make a decision right off the bat I decided to delve into my stash of fabrics and look for inspiration. My gut told me that the rosettes had a buttery feel to them so I focused on buttery coloured fabrics and this is what I pulled.

The top fabric is what I used in the centre of each rosette . The next fabric had some of the same colours. It isn't a fabric I would have normally selected when shopping but it was under $5/yard (this girl loves a bargain) so I bought a couple of yards with a view to fussy cutting them at a future date. I wasn't crazy about the fabric which made the idea of hacking it up much easier! The bottom fabric was a small piece of fabric sent to me by a friend. I love directional prints and this is right up there as one of my favourites. My plan was to surround each rosette with the bottom two fabrics.

I have also been holding on to a smaller piece of fabric that would make a lovely border and it worked perfectly with the colours I had already selected. I wasn't sure whether I would use the floral print as a border or the black and gold bar print portion. I didn't have enough of the fabric to be able to use both parts. That decision would have to wait. The first thing to do was make an open donut that would surround each rosette.

I made an open donut to surround each rosette. Notice how I captured just half of the brown print from the middle fabric. I think it looks like little crowns that will look perfect atop each hexagon in my rosettes. The buttery yellow striped fabric positively vibrates! I used the stripes as my registration marks to line up my hexagons for placement and then cutting.

I know you are wondering what the rosettes will look like when they are surrounded by the open donut. Here is the first rosette. It is called Blenderizer and it is in Booklet 4 of my Easier Than Pie & Beyond hexagon rosette patterns.

Here is another rosette, Tea Time from Booklet 1. Notice that I didn't capture the same part of the striped print as in the rosette above. That is because I wanted to use the fabric efficiently and the repeat (the distance between the beginning of the print) was quite large so the space in between would have been wasted. Instead I cut one set of hexagons and then moved just enough to cut the next set of hexagons on the strip. In doing this there was very little waste and while the part of the stripe that was used is different around each rosette they all work because they are cut from the same fabric.

Once all the rosettes were surrounded it was time to decide "what next". I have written about breaking down hexagons into component shapes such as diamonds and triangles.  My Road 66 is made with diamonds and triangles as connectors and that is what I decided to do with my Easier Than Pie & Beyond rosettes. I had a fabric in mind and hoped it would work. It did!

Tomorrow I'll announce the winners of my draw and will tell you more about the Easier Than Pie & Beyond quilt top! Don't forget to leave a comment here to be entered to win one of my books of patterns! Until tomorrow, happy sewing!

One last bit of business, I'm linking up with The Needle and Thread Network's WIP where Canadian textile/fibre/fabric artist bloggers share with others. If you are a Canadian blogger why not join it and if you are from other part, pop on over and see what others are doing!

Karen H