I admit it: I am opinionated. And I like to print out my opinions onto fabric using my computer printer and Bubble Jet Set. One of my favorite color combinations is black and white and pink. I have two 50 lb. paper boxes full of black and white prints so it was no trouble to pull out several dozen to combine with Fan Hexagon blocks using pink prints. (more…)
Many of you are familiar with Shar Jacobson’s acrylic template sets. What you may not know is that she regularly will design a new quilt using an old template set, recycling the same template set. I thought that attitude was highly commendable and wanted to do it with my Fan Hexagon set.
Obviously you can use the whole hexagon in several different ways,
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I don’t use layer cakes or pre-cuts at all (I buy fabric in quantity!) but a friend of mine uses pre-cuts often. She has been experimenting with the Fan Hexagon Template Set and told me to pass along that the 10″ Layer Cakes work great. You can get one large Hexagon plus the two inner side pieces from one piece of fabric.
Again, going through my scraps I pulled together enough fabrics to make this 14-color spectrum, interspersed with mostly white/black prints. You can’t see the details in some of the white and black prints but there’s a fabric that shows American landmarks (the Statue of Liberty is in the centermost hexagon) and another fabric that shows a village called “Quilt Town.” You will notice in the appliqued small hexagons in the upper and lower border that there is two of every color except yellow. That’s because I wanted the small hexagons to start and end in the “up” position and, because I absolutely could not find any more of one of the yellow fabrics (and if I had to eliminate the yellow hexagon from the top border, I had to eliminate it from the bottom border). One of the risks of working with scraps is you run out!
I wanted to go completely scrappy using the fan hexagon template set. So I went to my stash and pulled 15 floral fabrics to make up 3 fans. I used a white on white print for the background triangles. I alternated the way the fans were pointing, added a white strip on the top and bottom of the band of fans so the fans would appear to be “floating.” I scrounged in my scraps again and found a green and white floral for the borders. I did simple in-the-ditch quilting. I used an owl print for the backing, multicolored owls on white background. I really like the way it turned out and it didn’t take very long to sew up (took more time to paw through my scraps!).
Late in 2016 I created an original pieced hexagon design. No, it’s not another pieced hexagon design with dozens of itty-bitty pieces. Don’t get me wrong… I am in awe of millefiori quilts and some of the other intricately pieced hexagon designs. I’m just never going to make one. I make BIG quilts; queen- sized is my standard size. I also like to complete my quilts in a reasonable amount of time, say less than a year. Those millefiori quilts have got to take several years.
So when I was designing the Fan Hexagon, I made it big enough so you can easily and quickly sew a large quilt and the individual pieces of the Fan Hexagon are large enough to show off medium to large scale fabrics.
It was quite an education to produce this set of templates. I sincerely feel for the guys in the Art Department at T&T Graphics who were unfailingly professional and courteous through my dozen or so revisions. At times it was like speaking two different languages: quilt-speak to engineering-speak. Anyway now it is done and I invite you to visit my For Sale page and see the template set.
