First Project of 2011

I can't help it. I had to play with my new fabric. And, after marathon quilting sessions to get the deck quilts done, I needed a couple of days away from the sewing chair.

So I pulled out my new 3-yard piece of Amy Butler "Bliss Bouquet" from her luscious Love collection, put a fresh new blade in the rotary cutter, found a box of flat-head flower pins, and sliced up a whole bunch of wedges to make a One Block Wonder (OBW) quilt, hexagon version, from this book.

Three yards isn't a lot for an OBW, but this print has only a 17.5" repeat (vs. the 24" typical of many large prints), so I was able to cut 4 3.5" strips across the width, which provides wedges for about 70 hexagon blocks, plus some left over for a narrow border... or for a few more blocks, should I discover I desperately need them.

I  Santa bought this fabric specifically with OBW in mind. I love the purple-green color combo, and there's a lot of motion in the leaf and floral shapes in the print. To my surprise, when I arranged my wedge sets into hexagons, a surprising number of them looked more static than "in motion:"

The book recommends arranging every block so the on-grain edge of each piece is on the outside of the hexagon. I'm sure that's good advice, but about a third of my blocks look best with a bias edge on the outside. I may regret it, but I'm going to sew them up this way:

As you can see, I am using the paper-plate method of block organization for this stage (thanks, Shelley!). This is intended as a "pick away at it in between other stuff project," so progress reports may not follow in rapid fashion. But you never know: once I start sewing these up I might have too much fun to stop.

"Venus de Hilo" is off to a great start for 2011: 5 posts in the past 3 days! That's gotta be a record, here. I hope to have lots of lovely stuff to show you this year, and will continue to post works in progress, not just finished stuff, but there's no chance I'll keep up that kind of pace. As of today I am back to my usual "post when I've got something to show or when I get around to it" schedule.

Happy, happy New Year everyone!
Hope yours will be especially awesome...