Even when doing a free form quilt, I like to incorporate elements of a traditional block somewhere in there. There's a hexagon block that's sometimes called Grandmother's Garden, sometimes called Honeycomb, depending on the region. It's got a couple of other names, too, but I forget. This time out that was my traditional block, and it saved me when dealing with the Glaring Error.
Below on the left, you see four dark green hexagon flowers with olive centers, my non-traditional use of the Honeycomb block. (They're made out of a deeply-textured honeycomb cloth. Clever!) All of that, and the red flower, were already in when the horrible design error was discovered. You can't see it now, but on the right was the giant hole left by the horrible error. Well maybe you can see where it was if you look really close. Eventually the thought hit -- more Honeycombs, but ghosted! So I made a bunch more hexagons in the light base green and a couple in the Ghana blue/green, along with partials in both cloths. Then I worked them into the giant hole. This took quite a while because the hole borders were irregular, hexagons are hexagons, and I had to work this in without mucking up the stripe or the petals of the centerpiece flower. Let's just say there was much Riesling and bad language. I admit that at one point I resorted to Whaler's. It was a difficult three weeks trying to make this work. O the humanity.
This pic was taken long after the hole was filled and I was pinning up the interior border.
Notice how this doesn't look anything like The Sketch. Also, what's not here is the grass. Or the leather strips. Or the purse bee cloth.*** Heh.
Here are two close-ups of one of the corner bees being ensnared, which also shows a bit how I do the folds.
All of the corner bees will have poofed wings, but I can't do that part until I'm done with the quilting bit because their wings will overlap the binding that will make the outer, final border. But the runaway bee got poofed early. Here he is in poof progress.
I tacked the wings down using Fredi because the wing thread is a clear nylon/plastic, kinda thick and set with a zig stitch. To ensure *nothing* goes wrong with the poofed wings down the road, it was best to use the machine.
*** I didn't document building the purse. I made it from a stripped book, and one element includes this adorable cloth with teeny flowers and bees.
