Category Archives: Yellow

Five Flowers for Eleni

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Flowers for Eleni HPI decided to also do yellow and white flowers.  They’re wrinkly because the papers are still in.

Flowers for Eleni Back HP

I’m really happy with how they came out (I think I did a pretty good job of choosing hues in each color that worked well with one another), and I hope they fit well into the quilt(s) that Jodi from Tales of Cloth and her helpers make for Rachel and her family.  Here’s the latest from Rachel.  I wish the auction hadn’t been Instagram-only.

Even though I’ve been doing EPP for months now, this is the first project where I actually removed the basting and papers.

Flowers for Eleni Removing Papers HPIt was a little scary at first, and I didn’t realize just how much thread went into the basting stitches until I was cutting them at every corner, but just feeling the fabric drape like fabric again was wonderful.

Flower for Eleni Papers Out HPYou can see that I used a thin light grey thread on the colored parts (Aurifil 50 wt, which I am in LOVE with), and a thicker dark grey thread on the parts connecting with the black.  You can see both sets of stitches a little on the front, but it’s HANDwork, so I like to see it.

I was worried that the seam allowances weren’t behaving, but I put all five flat into a padded mailer, smooshed between pieces of paper, and I think they’ll get to Jodi in Australia better than they left here.

Some people were appliqueing their flowers onto background fabric, per Jodi’s assembly plan, but I just don’t have a deep enough stash to have made that viable.  Also, since I had two light flowers, I wanted her to have some leeway on how she backed them (inverse for those?  Light flowers and dark background?  Or not).

I also didn’t trust myself to do the machine applique and I had no time at all for hand applique.  I hope she can use them and that they play well with other people’s flowers.  This was my first attempt at contributing blocks to a quilt.

I can’t wait to see what she and her helpers do with them and I hope that Rachel’s family can take comfort from them.

Yellow FQs

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I was at the fabric store and had to add some yellow fat quarters to my stash in a bid to alleviate my yellow diamond problems.

Yellow FQ Stack HPYou got me.  Two of those are orange, not yellow.  I’m still pretty orange-obsessed.

Even though I’ve changed focus to my tester flower garden project (Tiny Flower Garden), my main hexagon project (I’m Not a Machine) is never far from my mind.  I hope these yellows blend with the ones I have, so I can get moving on it again as soon as Tiny Flower Garden’s done.

 

Yellow Hexagon Diamond Problems

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I’m still not happy with the layout for the yellow hexagon diamond.  I basted a bunch more yellow hexagons, but I can’t get them to play nicely with each other.

Yellow Hex Diamond Layout

This isn’t the best picture, but you can see that I have a pretty wide variety of yellows, large differences in intensity, as well as lots of other incidental colors.  I think it’s too much black and brown (and orange!) and I’m pretty sure I don’t like this layout.

Here it is next to my completed orange hexagon diamond (which is upside down in the picture, but you get the idea).  See how much better the orange flows?

Yellow Hex Diamond Layout with OrangeI’m at a loss for what to do next.  Either I need more yellows, or I need to get used to the idea of more variety in the diamond (which might be a good thing, since it’s hard to find yellow prints with just shades of yellow).

I guess I just have to let it sit a while.  I have plenty of other project to work on, like poor Sec’s pumpkin quilt.  It’s getting COLD here.

Yellow Hexagon Diamond in Progress

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I’m pretty proud of how my first hexagon diamond turned out, and I wanted to see how it would look in a different color, so I got all excited and started cutting little squares from all of my yellow scraps (and yardage).

Unbasted Yellow Hexes

I got a bunch basted, but I’m not too happy with the layouts I’ve tried.  I’m beginning to think that I just don’t have a wide enough variety of yellow fabrics.  I’m trying not to repeat any fabrics in each diamond.  I’ve done a bunch more fussy-cutting, since it was so popular with Prim, but bees seem to be over-represented.

The scrappy oranges seemed to all meld into one another, which I liked.  When I looked back I saw it was because the fabrics had mostly just shades of orange and white, with a little yellow thrown in.  These yellow hexes have all sorts of colors, including strong ones like brown and black.

I have to decide if I just need to beg and buy more yellow scraps/fabric or if I can be content with a diamond with more variety.

I know this diamond project is going to take years and in the grand scheme of things, a few diamonds that I end up using for things other than the final project (whatever it ends up being) is no big deal.  But this is my first EPP project and each diamond takes SO LONG.  I know they’ll go faster as I get more comfortable hand-sewing, but I might not sew another for a little while.  Basting is nice and safe.

Yellow Hexagons and Loosies WM

I basted some extra oranges and had some fun fussy-cutting other fabrics.  I now have a nice little pile of multicolored hexes that aren’t going to fit nicely into any color scheme save “totally random”, which is kind of cool.