The last 34 Glorious hexagons that I showed here were made all cut from the Panel Fabric. I decided to put together three layer stacks of both sections of the Panel Fabric and cut nothing but Kim and Dolores blocks from those stacks.

Here is the entire Panel Fabric from which the sections were cut.

The stack above is the first section.

The stack above is the second section.

Here we have the first section with four pieces cut to make four Kim blocks.

Here we have the first section totally exhausted of possible Kim and Doloris cuts.

Here we have the second section totally exhausted of possible Kim and Dolores cuts.

Committing myself to cutting both sections completely with Kim and Dolores blocks did result in some blocks that I might not otherwise have cut. I imposed these restrictions upon myself simply as a means of stretching my limits, and I believe it was a worthwhile exercise. That being said, I did not feel it was beneficial to cut every possible area in the second section of the Panel Fabric. Looking at the piece above you can see areas that could have been cut into Kim and Dolores blocks, but I felt that to do so would not result in very good blocks. Therefore, I left those areas behind so I could cut smaller shapes later.

 

Here are the 17 blocks made from the first section of the Panel Fabric arranged next to each other without setting triangles.

Here are the 17 blocks made from the second section of the Panel Fabric arranged next to each other without setting triangles.

Here are the 17 blocks made from the first section of the Panel Fabric arranged next to each other with setting triangles.

Here are the 17 blocks made from the second section of the Panel Fabric arranged next to each other with setting triangles.

Here are all 34 blocks made from both sections of the Panel Fabric without setting triangles.

I would have taken a photograph of all of the blocks with setting triangles, but I had run out of Kona Chocolate at the time. Since taking these shots I have combined many of these blocks into larger hexagon units, so I’ve missed the opportunity to photograph them together with setting triangles.

As a result of my three layer panel experiment I have come to a few conclusions. First of all I really love blocks such as Kim and Doloris with very few pieces. I intend to make more of these three piece blocks along with a few other blocks that use only six pieces, such as Carol and Doris. Blocks like these are especially well suited to fabrics that have large elements of subject matter. This is the case with the Panel Fabric. It is also the case with the Large Horse Head Fabric. My second conclusion is that I find it limiting to work with only a three layer stack. I felt that it made me make too many arbitrary compositional choices. I think moving forward that I will be making only six layer stacks and accepting the fact that this will yield duplicates when cutting Kim blocks. It will also leave me with extra pieces when I require only three repeats of certain shapes in some blocks.

My next post is going to feature the nine inch large hexagons that I have been putting together using these blocks.

Here are Glorious Hexagons 151 through 160.

#6 Doloris

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#6 Doloris

With this decade we are almost caught up with all of the blocks I have created so far. There are only two more blocks left to display from the three layer stack panel fabric experiment, so I will display them here even though they are a part of the seventeenth decade of blocks. So here are blocks 161 and 162.

#6 Doloris

#54 Kim

Today I will continue to show the Kim and Dolores blocks made from the three layer stacks created from the first and second sections of the panel fabric.

Here are Glorious Hexagons 141 through 150.

#54 Kim

#6 Dolores

#6 Dolores

#6 Dolores

#6 Dolores

#6 Dolores

#6 Dolores

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

In my last post I mentioned that I had put together three layer stacks of the two sections of the panel fabrics. I also said that I would be exhausting those stacks with cuts for Kim and Doloris blocks. This post continues to show those blocks. I will let them speak for themselves.

Here are Glorious Hexagons 131 through 140.

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#6 Doloris

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#6 Doloris

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

#54 Kim

 

Here are Glorious Hexagons 121 through 130

#54 Kim

This Kim features two of the horses from the Large Horse Head fabric.

#54 Kim

With this Kim I start getting some real milage out of the manes on the Large Horse Head fabric. I am utilizing my technique of carefully placing the template to make the manes intersect with the center and sides of the hexagon.

#54 Kim

This Kim is another propellor block.

#9 Doris

This Doris focuses on one of the heads from the Large Horse Head fabric.

#9 Doris

This Doris focuses on one horse from the Large Horse Head fabric. It also makes optimal use of one of the decorative manes as a design element.

#9 Doris

This Doris focuses on one horse from the Large Horse Head fabric. A very interesting design element emerges from the center as these pieces come together.

#2 Carol

This Carol focuses on one horse from the Large Horse Head fabric. Once again interesting things happen in the center of the block. Even though every Carol block can be put together three ways, in this case assembly was a no brainer. I had to have the little light blue star in the center.

#2 Carol.

This Carol will bring a welcome touch of blue to the finished quilt. It was actually hard though to decide which way to assemble these pieces. With three good options available I wished I could have made all three.

#54 Kim

This Kim was cut from the first section of the panel fabric. I really love the dark triangular element in the center of this block along with the eyes.

I decided to put together a three layer stack of both sections, and to cut nothing but Kim and Doloris blocks from the stacks until the stacks became exhausted. The next sixteen blocks you see will be from the first section of the panel fabric.

#54 Kim

This Kim was cut from the first section of the panel fabric. More than a few people in the Glorious Hexagons Facebook group thought that it looked like some strange creature with a large eye and two legs. Interesting. I didn’t see that until it was drawn to my attention. The above two hexagons are two of my favorite so far. There is very little blue in the panel.

I promised you more hexagons from the first section of the panel, but you are just going to have to wait a couple days to see the next ten Glorious Hexagons.

Here are Glorious Hexagons 111 through 120.

#33 Kerry

This Kerry uses the rust mane fabric for the outer shapes and the Large Horse Head fabric for the inner diamonds. This is one of my favorite blocks. I like the way the hue of the inner diamonds matches the rust of the mane fabric. The circular motif was a happy accident.

#54 Kim

This Kim is cut from the large horse head fabric.

#54 Kim

This Kim is cut from the large horse head fabric. I focused on the wavy white mane when making my selection for this block.

#48 Jeannie

The outer shapes of this Jeannie were cut from the large horse head fabric. The inner shapes were cut from the rust mane fabric.

#54 Kim

This Kim was cut from the Large Horse Head fabric.

#54 Kim

This Kim was cut from the Large Horse Head fabric. I managed to get an airplane propellor effect with the horse manes. This effect was accidental on this block, but I learned how to repeat it, and you will see it in some blocks coming up in the future.

#13 Judy

This Judy was cut primarily from the second section of the panel fabric. The exception being the diamonds along the outside which were cut from the neck of one of the horses on the Large Horse Head fabric.

#54 Kim

This Kim was cut form the Large Horse Head fabric.

#54 Kim

This Kim was cut from the Large Horse Head fabric.

#54 Kim

This Kim was cut from the Large Horse Head fabric.

Here are hexagons 101 through 110.

#2 Carol

This Carol is cut from the second section of the panel fabric. The mottled gray segment of the pattern lends an organic feel to an otherwise mechanical design.

#2 Carol

This Carol is cut from the second section of the panel fabric as well. I like the way the mottled gray creates a circle near the center of the block. I might use this hexagon for the center of a star using triangles of the green mottled fabric for triangles making up the outer portion of the star. I am planning to have a number of these stars scattered across the surface of the finished quilt.

#9 Doris

This Doris is cut from the running horses fabric. I like the star shape formed at the center of the block. The star is made from the mane of the rust colored horse.

#2 Carol

This Carol is cut from the running horses fabric as well. The central motif resembles a Celtic design element.

#2 Carol

This Carol is cut from the jumping horses fabric. I am not at all satisfied with the way it turned out. I will probably put this block on a reject pile and use it to experiment with the joining of blocks using triangles. I have other blocks that are not favorites that I can use in the experiment.

#9 Doris

This Doris is cut from the running horses fabric. I think that the central light gray area calls too much attention to itself. However, I think that it may work well enough with the other blocks when it is in with a crowd of blocks. When it gets into the final quilt the light center may not be so dominant. I did learn something from this block. Don’t isolate a very small contrasting bit of color in the center of a Doris block. I was sorry I did.

#35 Sharon

The central diamonds of this Sharon were cut from the rust mane fabric. The outer diamonds were cut from the large horse head fabric. I like the way the rust fabric coordinates with certain portions of the large horse head fabric. I also like the way the eyes of the horse appear very close to the border of the block. On of the things I like about this block is that the two different shapes are so close in hue and value that the block appears to be more of a solid from a distance. It will be a good place for the eye to rest from the busy blocks.

#33 Kerry

This Kerry is cut from the second section of the panel fabric. Both of these shapes were cut from areas that were left over from a six layer stack after other shapes were cut. In a sense these shapes are cut from “throwaway” pieces of fabric. I would not have chosen to make these cuts except that the fabric had been so depleted of interesting areas, and it was necessary to cut the shapes that still fit.

#33 Kerry

The inner diamonds of this Sharon were cut from the rust mane fabric. The outer half hexagon shapes were cut from the large horse head fabric. Here again we see how well the rust mane fabric coordinates with certain portions of the large horse head fabric. I like the way the blue is brought into this design along the edge of the block. I have a limited amount of rust mane fabric left, and may need to order more of it for this project.

#38 Sonja

The outer shapes of this Sonja were cut from the large horse head fabric. This was planned as a Kerry block, but there was not an area large enough to cut the half hexagons needed. So I pieced the half hexagon shapes from diamonds and triangles. The central diamonds were cut from the second portion of the panel fabric.

First let me say that I believe that the way to get the most out of your fabric when fussy cutting is to create layer stacks. That is what I have been doing for awhile now. That being said, I didn’t start out with layer stacks. When I first started to fussy cut I used a single layer of yardage and eyeballed each repeat. That took a great deal of time and effort. Plus I was left with pieces of fabric resembling Swiss cheese that were hard to manipulate. It is much harder to search the surface of a long piece of yardage for six identical portions than it is to manipulate a stack one sixth the size and cut only on piece.

Here we have a piece of fabric from the Laurel Burch Embracing Horses collection that I have been using for my Glorious Hexagons. I started off isolating repeats of either densely packed circles or triangles. After that I moved on to isolating single circles or triangles. Then I tried isolating more empty areas of the pattern. The resultant Swiss cheese wonder appear above.

I wanted to cut some 3 inch triangles from this fabric without regard to the pattern. I was going to just treat it as a tone on tone, albeit a fairly contrasty tone on tone. To my displeasure there were no areas large enough to cut a 3 inch triangle. I decided to cut 1.5 inch triangles and piece them to make 3 inch triangles. I managed to find a great many areas of the fabric that were large enough for the 1.5 inch triangle template.

 

I managed to cut a great many of these 1.5 inch shapes.

Here are a few of them basted and read to assemble.

I actually had enough shapes to make six 3 inch pieced triangles with a few pieces remaining. By this point fabric was taking on a “holier than though” attitude. Yet it seemed to have enough life left in it to yield up some even smaller shapes. I searched for the smallest shape I could find, the 1 inch triangle template, and cut what I could.

Here are the results. These pieces will come in handy for blocks that require small triangles.

Trust me when I say that there is nothing of value left here. The remaining scraps were tossed without regret.

Rest assured that the next time I use this fabric for fussy cutting a layer stack will be involved.