The flamingo hexagon quilt is finally finished!
It currently has pride of place on the quilt hanger in my dining room. I think I need a life-size wire flamingo sculpture to go with it - right?!
I was originally inspired by Barb Vedder's Hex Vex quilt.
At the time, Barb sold a pattern that included instructions and starter paper pieces for the different shapes needed for the quilt.
As much as I loved Barb's Halloween theme, I already had a stash of fabrics that I thought would make a great interpretation: flamingos! I pieced my first blocks in April of 2017.
Barb's Hex Vex description mentioned being inspired by Kim McLean's hexagon quilt from Quilter's Newletter Magazine, March 2005. As luck would have it, I still had a copy of that very issue. I immediately made a copy of the cover and consulted it repeatedly for inspiration.
It took several years to accumulate enough pieced hexies for a quilt. The finished quilt has over 100 pieced blocks, as well as plain blocks. It measures 60 inches by 52 inches.
I had a blast fussy-cutting all the different print fabrics I picked for the quilt! I cut several "viewing windows" from card stock to help me visualize how different motifs would look as part of a block. Later, I bought acrylic templates from Paper Pieces so I could cut block pieces using my 18 mm rotary cutter.
After experimenting with different fabric prep methods, I settled on using pre-cut card stock shapes from Paper Pieces. The purchased shapes were much more accurate than shapes I could make on my own. I also used a fabric glue stick to attach the fabric to the card stock shapes.
The simple swirl design of the quilting was a good compliment to all the movement in the quilt top!
I had a big piece of flamingo fabric that didn't make it into the quilt top, but looked great on the back. The yellow stripe in the sleeve matched the yellow in the flamingo print, so that was an easy choice.
A flamboyance, of course!
Many thanks to Barb for the inspiration and Diane for the quilting!
I think I will be entering Flamboyant Flamingos in my local quilt show next year!
