let's go fly a kite

Or sew some, it's whatever.

These are 11" hexagon blocks that I pieced by machine, using one 3.5" hexagon in the center surrounded by a bunch of kites. I'd count but I'm too lazy. Ok, it's 66 kites. I think.

I started making blocks like this a while back, completed three, realized they were a total time-suck and lost interest. (I also wasn't sold on my choice of gray for the background, something wasn't right.)

It was back during Clare's rose star craze (which is totally still going strong) and I thought it would be cool to gigantify them. So I printed as big of hexagons as I could fit on old Manila file folders and cut out a whole bunch of them. Then I switched gears and decided to try machine piecing instead of EPP. Should be faster, right?!

I had to figure out y-seams and they aren't that tricky, just time consuming. And for the amount of them in each one of these blocks, I should have doubled or tripled the size of my kites so it wouldn't take a million years to finish a quilt.

But that's what I get for making things up as I go along. I like this experimental method of quilting, even if it usually leaves me doing things the hard and/or long way. The wrong way, even.

Chain piecing and doing more than one block at a time do seem to speed the process up a bit. Although I had to really focus to keep from mixing things up, which if you know me...

Do you think ahead and follow patterns or just run with an idea and see where it takes you? I guess it's kind of like traveling someplace you've never been before, either with a map and GPS or feeling it out with your own sense of direction. Sometimes it's best to get where you're going as efficiently as possible, other times it's fun to go sight seeing and get lost along the way.

I'm linking up with Heather and Megan for Fabric Tuesday. Turns out Megan just had a baby!! Hop on over and take a look around :D


Sent from my iPhone