Hexagon Heaven (or Hell?)

This quilt was to be for my daughter's wedding. She and her husband will be celebrating their tenth anniversary next May. I told myself if I do not finish this quilt now, when I am forced to shelter in place during COVID, I never will. I put all the extras leafs into my dining table and set up an additional table along side it. My husband cut me four blocks of wood so the two tables could be at approximately the same height. I spread out the 169, 168, 169, 170, pairs of half hexagons – counting and recounting, even with the help and cross-checking of my husband, did not give consistent results.  I surveyed the scene, scratched my head, snapped a photo, and texted it to my daughter with the rhetorical question, "Can this ugliness be saved?".

It all started with the book One-Block Wonders and a multi-colored Mardi Gras mask print my daughter fell in love with. In my last post on this quilt – nine years ago on October 19, 2011 – I described the fussy cutting and assembly of all those half-hexagons. Then I stalled at assembling it into a beautiful, flowing creation as shown on the back cover of the book. Alas, I think the chosen fabric had too many colors competing; trying to corral them into color zones was hard, if not impossible, for me to execute. 

With renewed inspiration and increased resolve, I thought that maybe if I concentrated on individual hexagons and accented them with jewel tones drawn from the print I would be more successful.

I grouped a quartet of similarly patterned hexagons, planning to combine the unit with a companion color. Some quartets were not so obvious and had a outlier (or two) but I made a best effort.

Some quartets did not have an obvious dominant color. There were a lot of browns and blacks that did not excite me; nor did I want to feature them. First, I did the quartets which displayed an obvious companion color – "picking the low-hanging fruit" as the saying goes. Adding a solid triangle on opposite corners, I arranged the foursome of hexagons in columns of medallions. First I aligned two teal columns with each other. I considered adding a teal sashing between them.

Next I added pink and noticed I could offset the columns and see a secondary star pattern emerge.  I forged ahead with purple and orange. I really like the orange medallions since they pop so well, though technically, orange is not a jewel tone.

Then I realized if I spaced the columns apart with a kind of "transition" column between different colors, I might be able to extend those secondary star patterns. I explored using the jewel tone solids but then I realized I possibly had enough mask fabric hexagons to use them instead. I would need to be careful to place the "correct" color star-extending triangles on the outer edges."Transition" columns are grey in the diagram that follows the photo.

I will have to pay attention and plan what color triangles I add and where they go on those hexagons. The challenge will be to do this without a large enough design wall. Making the quilt in sections and relying on my trusty PowerPoint diagram is my workaround. Gretchen Rubin tweeted this quote with the accompanying image. This flowing cloud of color hints at my original optimistic dream for this quilt. Eisenhower's famous words remind me to be open to the results and not get hung up in analysis paralysis.

To keep myself honest and motivated, I am sharing my planning now with Cooking Up Quilts' link party MCM #187.