After a couple of weeks of being able to do nothing but hexies I desperately wanted to start a new quilt.  I do have a large number of quilts to finish but I just had to do something new to blow out the cob webs.

So last week when I was feeling better I started going through my Bloglovin feed and found two projects that I just feel in love with.  First there was Cari at There’s a Thread  fabulous tutorial for making a Palatina Pillow.  Then I found Amy at 13 Spools interview with Faith from Fresh Lemons, which included a photo of a wonderful poinsettia mini quilt (link here).   These two projects inspired me to make my own version.

Using Photoshop, I took different bits and pieces from some blocks I had scanned and played with their layout, shape, position and size.  The end result was this…

Which with fabric sewn on it looks like this…

The block was designed as a  4 x 4 inch block, the size I usually work with,  but for this quilt I blew it up to 7 x 7.   Blowing it up was as easy as selecting “scale to page” on my printer and then trimming the block using my ruler’s 1/4 inch mark rather than the dotted lines.

For me this is the perfect block to be working on at the moment, as you actually have to plan out the quilt  little.  So I have pulled out my colour pencils and have been pre-marking my paper patterns, block by block.  To make this pattern work how I wanted,  you must have blocks that match up, hence the pre-colouring!   As I am still unable to sew for long stretches and this process allows me to take breaks and go slower than usual.

When I put the blocks I have done so far up on the design wall I realised that there was another influence at work… my hexies.

I just can not seem to avoid them at the moment!