patchwork of the crosses

Playing with scraps

27 September 2010

When I ordered Christmas fabric online to make a tree skirt, I had to order 1/2 yard of each of the fabrics I planned to use. I had about 1/4 yard of each left after I cut out the tree skirt. The stripe caught my eye as a great fabric to fussy cut using the Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses [POTC] collection. The main shape in the collection is an elongated hexagon. When you fussy cut using a striped fabric, it’s easier to get a kaleidoscopic effect. Here are the 3 blocks I was able to create with the leftover fabric.

Instead of printing onto the back of the fabric like you would normally do with Inklingo, I printed the hexagon and square shapes onto freezer paper and cut them out. Then I ironed the freezer paper to the front of the fabric to make it easier to fussy cut each shape exactly the same.

I needed 2 sets of 4 and 1 set of 8 matching hexagons for each block. Also some squares were needed for the corners and connectors. I wasn’t as excited about the kaleidoscope effect the squares made and some of the hexagons that I cut. I discovered the in order to get the best effect, the hexagons should be cut perpendicular to the stripe and the squares need to be cut on the diagonal. [But I didn't discover that until I started sewing the shapes together and by then I was out of fabric.]

Pretend that the stripe runs horizontally all the way across the fabric here… This is how to orient the hexagons — at least for the center and next row of the block. You can see in the second and third blocks that the last row of 8 hexagons also looks okay with the stripe running through the length of the hexagon. In that instance, iron on the freezer paper with the hexagon points going horizontally instead of vertically.

The squares look best when you iron the freezer paper on to fussy cut them this way… Once again, imagine that the stripe runs horizontally all the way across the fabric. [This was the only fabric I could lay my hands on this afternoon that had any sort of stripe to show what I'm trying to explain.]

After the blocks were done, the design dilemma monster reared its head. What to use for the border around each block?? The red and green in the Christmas fabric was hard to match. For the tree skirt I ended up with some Fairy Frost Glitz fabric.

Uhm, no. This is just way more sparkle and glitz than I want to use here. I did like the gold border framing the block though.

Much better. I purchased some regular Fairy Frost in a gold and black when I was first trying to match the green and red so I used them. It’ll be a table runner. It measures approximately 11″ x 31″.

Not totally jazzed with the square sections all being different and wondering how this might look as a table topper, I played around in Paint Shop Pro. I’m thinking I need to order a bit more of this fabric. The fabric is Holiday Flourish III Elegant Stripe Crimson by Peggy Toole.

The edges might look better in black only although I do like the design effect in 3 of the corners. The center squares might be nicer surrounded by black much the way the original POTC looks. More playing with Paint Shop Pro ensued. Oh, and imagine that each block looks different here… [teehee]