Ongoing...

Since I made my list of ongoing projects a couple of days ago, I seem to have caught a case of Finishitis.
Yes, I seem to want to finish up some items before embarking on some new projects.  I have two pressing new things to start, but first I must finish at least one before starting a new one.

ongoing paper piecing hexagons,

 This is how far I've gotten on my Paper Pieced Hexagon Diamonds project.  I think I'll start to refer to it by a new name that's a bit shorter, perhaps "Three Diamonds" or "Diamond Rings",

 When I was working on it two days ago, I noticed that my cup seems to match the quilt perfectly! 

 Yesterday I finished this table runner.  It only needed the binding stitched down, so it wasn't very onerous

table runner with ribbon

I made it to try out some of the new ribbon we got at the store.  The ribbon with the pomegranates on is designed by Sue Spargo for Renaissance Ribbons.  The wide yellow and gray ribbon was from my stash, and is an antique French scrap.  The background fabric is a piece of silk I also had in my stash.

This morning I worked on my "Happy Chevrons" quilt.  It too is in similar colors to my hexagon quilt... I guess the whiteness of our winter has me searching for spring colors!

I think I'll hook up to the WIP Wednesday group today,

If you are visiting from there, welcome! 

English Paper Pieced Diamonds, part 2

After I had stitched a bunch of individual hexagons , I was starting to wonder how to put them together into a design.  So then I needed to spend quite a lot of time googling hexie images online.  That didn't get me too much further in my plan, but it was entertaining.
So, I decided I would have to use hexagon paper and play with color ideas.

 You can print off hexagon paper here  at printable paper.net-- although there are lots of sites you can do this. 
I thought of doing this with pencil crayons, which would have been fine, but I remembered that on my Electric Quilt 6 program, there is the option of making one block quilts, and sure enough I could do it on the computer. 
At first I thought of just spacing them with a row of black and white hexagons, but I didn't find this particularly appealing.


























So I started thinking of combining a variety of sizes.


eventually I came up with this panel:


 I printed out a paper copy of this plan to refer to as i stitch.
This was a good idea, since it's a bit complicated to try to remember.  Also this way I can count the number of hexagons I need from each fabric. So for example, I need 207 black and white ones. 
Then I realized that I have to start putting the whole thing together in sections in order to reuse some of the paper templates. 

 So I planned out some basic divisions on my paper copy, as you can see above.

this is the center diamond, with a row of black and white hexagons on the top left edge. 

When you start making larger pieces, the paper pieces that are totally surrounded by other pieces can be removed.  So, in the piece above I was able to remove the paper from behind the blue pieces, and the top left edge of the green. 
 Next, I made the section that ajoins this edge, so I can join them now!

This is actually a lot of fun.