Speaking of Hexagons

Speaking of hexagons....I've only ever made one hexagon quilt and that was in the year 2008.

I made this baby quilt using the Super 60 ruler.

Here is a bit of a close up.

I had lots of fun today, playing with this log cabin type, strip method....highly addictive.

I couldn't stop playing....just what I need another project, that has a tendency to grow, at an alarming rate. There are lots of possibilities, floating around my head, for this method.

River Valley Walk 2008

 

I am enjoying all the beautiful quilts entered in this year's Bloggers' Quilt Festival. If you have a minute, take a browse at Amy's Creative Side and you won't be disappointed.

I have chosen to enter a sampler quilt I made in 2008. This quilt is an example of what I love to do best.....play around with fabric. I often have "experiments" laying around and decided to join a few of them into a sampler type quilt.

The colours in the quilt are influenced by a walk I took one fall day, in the beautiful river valley, in our area.

Because of all the different blocks it looks different every time I fold it.

 

  

I probably learned something different from each different block. Just playing with each technique gave me more experience. I was to challenged to throw caution to the wind and trust my own instincts. 

 

This quilt ended up being a bit of a hodge podge but, it's one of the few quilts that I haven't given away....I use it almost every evening, when I'm in Victoria.

QAYG Featuring Children's Art

This is a QAYG project I had almost forgotten about. In the year 2008, my daughter was working with the Edmonton Inner City Children's Project. She wanted something, that would incorporate the art work, of many children, into one finished project. This is what we came up with.

  

The Children were given:

• Back ground squares in various colours
• Multi-coloured, pieces of fabric, fused with Wonder Under
• Fabric Paint
• Fabric Markers

 Later fellow Blockhead, Lauren Cherdarchuk and I incorporated the individual squares into a wall hanging and a quilt.

This is a great way to feature some of your children's art.

They Just keep Coming....QAYG Quilts

River Valley Walk 2008

This is sort of a sampler quilt...a number of the blocks were inspired, by a walk I took one beautiful fall day, in Edmonton's magnificent river valley. Some of the other blocks were me, just playing with fabrics and shapes. I decided to put them together in one quilt.

 When I started to join these blocks, I found the overall look to busy, so I added borders to each block, using another QAYG method and then joined the blocks, with the narrow, red lattice strips. I find those border strips, on each block, take the eye away from the lattice strips.

Here is the quilt back, you can see those border strips here as well.

I used a type of QAYG on the striped blocks as well.

QAYG Meets up with Improvised Blocks

In this next quilt I am still using the narrow, joining strips, as in Crazy Shortcut Quilts, but the blocks are liberated or improvised.....which ever term you prefer.


Playing with Stripes 2008

By using oversized blocks and random or improvised joining strips, the overall design of the quilt is no longer dominated, by the joining strips. 

I used a mix of wovens and flannels.  There are those spirals again, many are off center to add to the wonkiness.

No matter how you fold the quilt, you get a different look. It's like each block is a mini art quilt on it's own.

Crazy Shortcut Quilts

Crazy Shortcut Quilts by Marguerita McManus & Sarah Raffuse has been very influential, in my QAYG journey. This book illustrates:

• A great method for joining QAYG blocks
• A very innovative, assembly line method for constructing the quilt blocks. If you have a few of you working this assembly line, together, the quilt is done in no time. 

I have chosen to disregard the heavy use of decorative stitches that the book employs, simply because they aren't my style. Saying all that, I highly recommend this book.

The following quilts are all made using this method, with patterns from the book.  As you can see the lattice or joining strips are very much part of the design..... I will be addressing that later, because I like having more options.




Pattern:Sweet Sixteen (2007)

I off set the blocks, just for a change.

For my great nephew Julian

Pattern: Asian Inspiration (2008)

I made this quilt totally out of flannels, except for the joining strips and the binding. This quilt was  barely out of the dryer, when my oldest daughter, Sara, left with it under her arm.

Quilting detail...again with the spirals.

Pattern: Fossil Fern (2007)

This was a group effort (BLOCKHEADS).  We made enough blocks for two quilts, this being the smaller one.  Both were auctioned off, for charity.

Pattern: Think Pink (2007)

I made enough for two quilts again, one for charity and one for my lovely, great niece Madison.



And still More Cirlcles...QAYG

As I go through my quilts, I'm rather surprised, at how many are QAYG. The circles on this quilt are inset rather than applique. The quilt is all flannels, except for the binding and the joining strips. In my earlier QAYG quilts, including this one, the lattice or joining strips are very obvious
.

I just can't seem to get enough of spirals....easy when you are quilting the individual blocks.

 

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