Masked Hexagons, Socially Distanced: An English Paper Pieced Mystery Scrap Quilt

If you are one of the thousands of quilters giving time and fabric to make lifesaving masks, thank you. For me, making masks is not only a good deed, but a powerful way to reduce anxiety in a tragic  time. 

You may also be putting mask scraps aside, to someday make a  quilt. Here’s one idea that you can work on as you continue to make masks: 


And here's what it would have looked like on white:

It's not finished - it's just a top - because as I continue to make masks, I will grow it. The mystery, of course, is how all this will turn out - not just this quilt, but our lives.

UPDATE, 11/19/20 - I've finished this quilt and written up the pattern. The digital pattern is for sale on Etsy, here. All money raised from this $1.99 pattern will go to my Los Angeles Regional Foodbank fundraiser, here. 

Here's one fabrics I used in lots of masks - a purple batik featuring lots of birds: 

...And the hexagon I made from a scrap:

Button eyes are optional. Next, masks I made for border collie parents:

 And its hexagon: 

A different purple batik mask:

The hexagon

A stylish saw-blade fabric mask:

The condensed version, with button eyes, appears sweet but startled:

After making a pile of masked hexagons (most without button eyes) I decided to to socially distance them. I was heavily influenced by lines marked on store floors, and social media photos of kooky/brilliant people wearing hula hoops, pool noodle hats, inner tubes, and even wildly-oversized Burger King crowns, to keep their distance. So I gave some of my hexagon rows protuberances.  

No need for big decisions yet about the ultimate size of the quilt - you can grow it as you make more masks and hexagons. 

Solid colors on the upper portion of each hexagon represent faces; the prints on bottom are cut from my mask scraps. Button eyes are a good choice if you’re making an anxiety-reducing quilt for a youngster. We've all heard of Sunbonnet Sue - how about Pandemic Pat? 

Find my follow-up blog post, with lots more photos of masked hexagons, here. The digital pattern is for sale on Etsy, here. 

Of course, I have hexagons and English Paper Piecing on my mind because my new book was just published, Hexagon Star Quilts: 113 English Paper Pieced Star Patterns to Piece and Applique, available from Amazon (here) and wherever fine quilting books are sold! 

A "No Apologies" Tutorial for Improv Paper Pieced Log Cabin Triangle Quilts

UPDATE: My book with step-by-step directions for this quilt and its cousins, "Improv Log Cabin Triangle Kaleidoscope Quilts," is available in my etsy shop, here. An on-demand class, which includes the book with this pattern, is here.

When I started this quilt, the idea was to make a rainbow-colored 6-pointed star. I hoped to create a pattern people might use to make a wedding canopy, among other things.  The most relaxing way to do that, I figured, would be to start with log cabin triangles.  

So what you see in the central area of this quilt are a whole lot of log cabin pieced triangles - each center piece is light, and the three "logs" around it are darker. You're also seeing blocks I call "water lilies" - from left to right, the oddball orange, pink and purple blocks, as well as the lavender blocks on the bottom of the photo. These blocks are a log cabin variation, with light triangle corners added.

The problem with log cabin piecing triangles - compared to squares - is that the angles quickly become awkward and confusing, with sharp bias-cut corners. 

That's why I decided to piece all my triangles on clean scrap paper and/or newsprint from the packing store - $6.00 bought me a lifetime supply!  Most triangles were improv-pieced from the top of the paper - stitch-and -flip - with no markings needed on the paper. 

I pieced the water lilies onto scrap paper cut into triangles. Here's how it looked halfway through. 

 Then I stitched lighter colors to cover each corner:

The last step is using my equilateral triangle ruler to trim the excess. (In this photo, I'm doing it on a pink block.) 

My favorite part of this quilt is the six stars in the corners  - spontaneous and irregular piecing makes them vibrate! Here are a couple.

The triangles in the dark outer border are mostly crazy-pieced 

When the quilt reached 67" at the widest by 57" high, still hexagon- shaped, I decided it was finished.  If it were a wedding canopy (a "chuppah" in the Jewish tradition) it would need 6 poles for all the corners!?  Better yet, if someone wants to use this pattern for a canopy, they could sew the top to a square or rectangular background. 

[UPDATE: Several people have suggested that the finished hexagon could be basted to a square of lightweight chiffon. It would create the illusion of a floating hexagon! I love that idea, thank you!]

When it was done, and I counted the number of equilateral triangles, I was astonished. No matter how many times I counted, it kept adding up to 600! How cool is that? Thus the title of this quilt: "Fireflower 600."

Another quilt in this series was shown last week. 

My on-demand class, which includes a book containing directions for making this quilt, is now here.  If you just want the book, it's in my etsy shop, here.

Going Around with Modern Improv Paper-Pieced Log Cabin Triangle Quilts

Here are the projects that have consumed me in recent weeks.  The first started out as this pyramid of 11 hexagon-shaped formations that I call kaleidoscopes: 

I finished it just like that, with the pyramid shape and a dark grey binding. I hoped it was done, right up to the moment that it occurred to me that if I turned the thing upside down, and added another kaleidoscopic formation to the bottom.....

...it would become an exclamation point! 

I love punctuation, so I stitched that "dot" to the bottom. The dot has quilted 60 degree triangles popping out from the edges. I enjoyed looking at this formation for a while, until I turned the whole thing upside-down again....

...and it became a snowflake on a mountain top!? Or the eye on the pyramid, on the US dollar bill? One person saw a Christmas tree; someone else saw a resting diamond with a gleam on top! What do you see? 

Whatever, it's much easier to make this than it looks, and it's one of the three projects in my brand new 54-page e-book, here. The triangles in these projects were mostly improv pieced onto scrap paper; a few of the more complicated ones are foundation paper pieced from the back. Because of the spontaneity, if you try this approach, your quilt will be different from mine, but you will be just as astonished as I was!

Here are some of the 11 "kaleidoscopes" in this quilt. Each is made up of 24 improv pieced equilateral triangles. You can see that some identical triangles went into different formations. These blocks measure about 13" across; If I'd finished each separately, they would have made good wallhangings/table mats. (The book includes directions for a variety of finishes). 

Aren't these fun? My next post has a different quilt made this way. My book with step-by-step directions for this quilt and its cousins, "Improv Log Cabin Triangle Kaleidoscope Quilts," is available in my etsy shop, here. An on-demand class, with 30 plus videos, and which includes the book, is here.