Coloring...

When I was but a wee bairn, we used to color instead of playing video games. The big trick was to learn to color inside the lines.

Now, Bonnie Hunter has me coloring again. And, being creative at the same time. She showed her pattern for her hexagon quilt and that got me thinking. There was no need for me to keep going haphazardly into a perpetual hex project that I could never end. All I needed was a pattern. And, that's when I learned that pattern designing is not as easy as it sounds. Patterns are worth the $9-$15 we spend on them. Somebody made a lot of mistakes so I don't have to repeat and that's worth the price I pay for their pattern.

You can see my first attempts at designing on the left, still kind of haphazardly trying to add a border without figuring out where and how my corners would line up. But, on my walk with the dog yesterday, I figured out that I could count my repeats and figure out exactly where something would land on the border BEFORE I colored in the block. That resulted in the two plans on the right; one of which I'll pick...sometime. But, since what I have started isn't even all together yet and I still need to add a red border before I even consider making all those blue flowers, I have plenty of time to figure it out. While it looks small, that is a considerable number of hexes to cut and baste before I need to piece them onto the quilt.



So, how much progress have I made so far?

I went from this to the picture below in two weeks. Yes, three of the corners were assembled before and I pulled out the dark circles and pulled out the dark center and turned those dark circles into diamonds and made a new center. Then, I added the light blue to the dark blue diamonds. Now, I'm removing enough white hexes to create a space for those new diamonds and am inserting them into the finished corners. One corner is completely finished. One corner is nearly finished. And, the other two just have the blue diamonds laying on top of them.



This is a really great traveling project and it's a great sitting with the family and watching TV project. And, it can get really obsessive and draws me in to work on it more and more and more, even though I have other quilting I should be working on.

You know what I mean. I know there are a bunch of us working on hex projects this fall and I think they're taking over more and more of our quilting time. I read on a website that in the early 20th century, most quilters wanted to finish at least one hex quilt in their lifetime. I can see why. They are a lot of work.

If you aren't working on a hex projects, you've probably been inspired by seeing one of the hex projects that another quilter is working on. I recommend it as a highly relaxing and very portable bit of fingerwork. But, like those quilters of the last century, I hope to finish one in my lifetime. If I get to another one, that's just gravy.

Take care and have a great Thursday. Lane