MMSC - Week 22

Remember a few weeks ago, I laid out my hexies for my Batik Hexie Quilt (Grandmother's Flower Garden) and I hated it?

Yea ... I still hate it. It just is not working for me. I thought about it for weeks and every time I looked at the photo the hate rose up. I needed to do something about it, otherwise I had a few hundred hexies and several hundred 3" squares of fabric that would be shoved in the back of a closet.

The Mini Lotus quilt by Jaybird Quilts was recently added to my pinterest page, and I love it. I love the pattern, the colours … I knew this would be something I would try in the future. I started thinking about it more and more. Then it came to me. I can do a variation on it with some of the hexies from my Batik Hexie Quilt.

I knew that I still loved the blue fabric I was using as the background in that quilt. I also loved the purple vines fabric. It took a while to decide on the filler fabric colour, but I went simple and it is working for me.

What do you think?  Lots of blue flowers (88 in total) with a handful of purple flowers (13) with crisp, clean white filler pieces. The litte triangles are actually a white-on-white fabric (cute little stars) and the diamonds are just white kona cotton. This week I managed to baste 6 triangles, 5 diamonds, 5 blue hexies, and 5 purple hexies. Big progress for me! I also cut fabric for 26 more triangles and 85 diamonds. All the hexie fabric is already cut. (Hence my need to find a way to salvage this project. The other hexies have been stashed away for future projects.)

The quilt top will now be smaller than I originally planned, but if I add a 6" border I can make a decent sized throw. I've calculated how many I need of each shape (541 blue hexies, 166 purple hexies, 606 triangles, and 606 diamonds) and I have a lot of basting to do, but I am much happier with how everything goes together.

I've discovered I'm not really drawn to scrappy or multi-fabric quilts (at least not of my own making -- I have, however, seen some amazingly beautiful scrappy quilts out there). I'm not even overly drawn to patterned fabric. I'm a solids kind of girl. I think I need to rethink a lot of my future projects …

Linking up, as usual, with Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts.

PS All of my shapes are 1.25" in size. The hexies are an almost perfect size, not too big and not too small. However, those diamonds and triangles are tiny!! The triangles in particular are a challenge to baste since a few Clover clips take up all the space and I can barely find a place to hold it as I'm basting. Challenging, but super cute!