Did you ever solve a Rubix Cube?

A number of years ago I got a wild hair about hexagons and English Paper Piecing.  I knew it work work well for travel and had lots of flexibility. 

Marti Michell has a book focused on hexagons and had a couple of line drawings of some ideas but no patterns for what I wanted.  I could see that if I could find 6 shades of some basic colors I could work up a variation on a tumbling block quilt with some pieced stars.  The whole thing does a 3 dimensional look.  Over the last 6-7 years I have collected the fabrics and worked on the quilt every now and then.  Often the quilt would just sit on the wall waiting for new pieces to join in.

In the last 6 months I got serious about completing the quilt just simply because I was close enough that I could see the end.  Blocks came together and went up on the wall....moved around to other locations....The stars moved from the top to the side of the blocks...making the stars took more trial and error than what I planned ...remakes were numerous....and suddenly the whole center of the quilt was done.

With the help of Page, Mary, Debbie and MaryAnn I figured out the border treatment and got the top finished and to Page for the quilting.  She experimented with different thread colors and designs in the border to complement the flow and movement of the piecing.

 

 

As with almost every quilt that I make, I learn something new or fine tune a skill.  In this quilt I found that my hand-work on the English Paper Piecing dramatically improved with time & experience.  I also found out the it is really hard to have a floating border that stays straight.  If I had to do over there are multiple color placement changes I would make and I know for sure that I would stitch in the "in the ditch" quilting for the ribbons first and then applique down the fabric after the fact.  The double piping that I used on this worked well but I think I needed a slightly larger cording to add a little more weight to it.

I like the quilt, it looks great (hangs straight despite the quality of this photo), it will never get a ribbon (just too many errors) but it was a process and adventure.  On to the next one.........