Book Preview #4

I'm a little torn about what I want to feature in today's preview. On the one hand I'd like to focus on one of the non-quilt projects because there are 14 of them and 6 quilts. On the other hand, there is one quilt I especially want to mention, partly because I'm pretty fond of it and partly because it's going to be the focus of my demo tomorrow during my Open Studios session at Quilt Festival in Houston.
The thing that's tipping it for the quilt is the fact that I rushed to make an alternate block to demonstrate tomorrow and I'll be damned if I'm not going to show it off in this space.
OK. Today's featured project is called The Modern Baby Quilt.

 If memory serves me this was the first project I designed and finished for the book. Truth be told, that's the way I work, one project at a time from start to finish. I don't like to have multiple things going simultaneously.
A few weeks ago, I posted about this quilt and told you all that it was a variation of a quilt from my book. See, I wasn't kidding.

I love making baby quilts. They're so gratifying because they're small and a wonderful opportunity to be playful, both in terms of fabric selection and construction.

I really wanted this quilt to be fun to piece and for me that means it's a wee bit challenging. There are plenty of projects both in my book and in others that are fabulous for a newbie, but sometimes I feel like there's not that much out there for someone who's got a few quilts under their belt. This quilt uses a technique called Y piecing to machine sew the partial and whole hexagon sections. It's an incredibly useful little technique and can be used to machine stitch other odd shapes. Y piecing does require that you stop stitching some seams 1/4" short of a corner and that can be disconcerting. A part of me really wanted every millimeter of my seams sewn together, but a few deep breaths and watching the top come together and stay that way despite the unstitched corners, reassured me that Y piecing was pretty darn cool.
So, tomorrow I'm going to be demonstrating this cute little trick using the templates from the book. I've made a couple of variations from the original.

 Rather than use one fabric for the center hexagon, I sewed it out of 6, string pieced triangles. I made a template for the triangle, but added a bit too much seam allowance. No matter, after I sewed the triangles into a hexagon, I overlaid the one of the outer hexagons and trimmed it to size. You gotta roll with the punches. I limited the color palette to orange for the "flower" and gray for the background, but used a variety of fabrics to give the block complexity.
I might pick up a few new oranges and grays tomorrow at Quilt Festival. Rumor has it they sell fabric there. :)