Completing FMQ on Masquerade

After completing the FMQ in the jewel toned equilateral triangles in my 9/25/20 post, I still had to secure the hexagons in some way. I decided on an asterisk in the center of each. Originally I was going to make that asterisk in the same color thread as the triangles surrounding the hexagon. Feeling lazy, I was reluctant to keep changing thread. Sometimes my tension balance gets a bit off and needs to be readjusted for a different thread, even if it is the same brand. Perhaps the amount of dye for a certain color makes a difference...? Besides the tension tweaking, I would also need to figure out what to do for those hexagons in the transition columns that had two colors of triangles surrounding them. Laziness won out, and I decided not to change thread colors and to do all centers in the same color orange as along the edges. I liked the results. When they do show, the orange asterisks seem to echo the orange plus sign sparkles in the black background. What was initiated as laziness, worked out better. Not being able to find those four asterisks in the next photo is a good indicator that I achieved my desired effect. They are sufficiently hidden that they do not detract from the symmetry of the hexagons yet they hold the layers of fabric and batting together.

 

Since I dragged from center to center, rather than traveling, I had to cut all those connecting strings – front and back. I snipped and kept filling a handy cup I trailed along. Then I repeated the whole process on the back. It was not difficult, but methodically going over ~8100 square inches of the king size quilt – twice – was time consuming.

The final FMQ to be completed was on the isosceles triangle edge inserts. The stitching lines would be parallel and have graduated height like a zig-zag piano keyboard border.  I suppose they could have been orange like the center of the hexagons and the equilateral triangles they bordered, but I rejected that option early on, preferring a color similar to a black and white binding. I had planned striped binding; this verticality would echo the stripes. I needed to decide if  the lines should be black or white. To avoid the prison look of black bars over the faces I chose to use white thread. As a bonus, the white flashes in the background are picked up by white thread. So that the tallest line would fall at the highest point of the triangle in each edge insert, I started in the center and worked my way left; then I traveled along the edge back to the center and continued to the right.

 

 

The white thread still looks fine over masks that are not white and I think it will look even better when the binding is in place.

   

Going back to my Pfaff domestic I sew ¼" from the edges, negotiating that 60° angle on each of the four corners. I am in the home stretch now. I need to make and attach the labels and make and attach the binding. I am off to do that now instead of blogging.