Honeycomb

Honeycomb is another one of the little kits I picked up at quilt show last year, along with the True Blue quilt I had on the blog a couple of posts ago. It's another pattern with fabrics by Kim Diehl. Her method of construction for this quilt was to sew background squares together, then applique the hexagons onto the background, maybe so the background diamonds would appear unbroken.

I decided that method was not for me, so I drafted a paper piecing pattern and have been making them that way. Row 1 is a little off, so I am restitching it, and there's one more row to be added to the quilt, plus borders.

I worked on the quilt today and before this, on Friday evening. Coincidentally, on Saturday I happened to be cruising Wanda's Exuberant Color blog and saw a spiral baby quilt she just finished that she referred to in an earlier post as Fractured blocks. Her quilt was based on a quilt from Kathy Doughty's book, Making Quilts With Kathy Doughty.

I like Wanda's quilt very much, and while I was contemplating how I might draft the block for it, I realized the paper piecing pattern from Honeycomb would work just fine, minus a couple of extra seam lines. Love it when an idea comes together.

The Honeycomb blocks are 2" finished, so I kept that same size for the units in the Fractured blocks. This is one block, 6", and I want to make a 9- or 12-block quilt. I did order Kathy Doughty's book because there were other quilts in the book I liked, and I'll wait until the book arrives before I make any more Fractured blocks. Some of the units are mirror imaged, and I want to see exactly what Kathy's instructions are for making the block sets.

It was in the 40s over the weekend, and I was thankful that nearly all of the ice on the walkway and driveway melted. That would be just in time for a winter storm watch Monday night into Tuesday. Could be snow, sleet, or freezing rain. Great.