Cardinals and Hexagons for a Festive Season

This was a post that was featured on the Benartex blog last year featuring Jackie Robinson's collection called Festive Season. I'm sitting with my morning coffee in my living room, looking at my finished quilt hanging over a very old chest of drawers. We moved into a new house (actually, 40+ years old) last week and I haven't hung any quilts yet. So, I've draped a few and this one "told" me to blog about it today!

Here is what I wrote:

I received a bundle of many of the prints, and what I was most excited about were the vertical panels of cardinals! I had plans to make a strippy quilt and use these birds. But, even after cutting dozens of half hexagons and piecing several vertical strips, I walked away and started something else!

Vertical border print from Festive Season

 These are the half hexagons I cut, but then moved on to another idea!

Half hexagons cut from most of the prints

 Here are the fabrics that I began with.

Fabrics from Festive Season

I decided to make an upsized block using Katja Marek's New Hexagon calendar, the November 25 block. I can rotary cut any patch based on the 60 degree grid and this is what I did.

The New Hexagon Perpetual Calendar

Here is the block as it appears in the calendar:

November 25 block from Katja Marek's perpetual calendar

Notice that there are 3 shapes in the block: a triangle, a diamond and a jewel. These have 60 degree angles. Easy to cut. Let me show you how!

Have you ever noticed the diagonal lines on your rulers? These are MAGIC! I use the 60 degree lines all the time. I cut 3" strips of this gorgeous gold print, sliced off the selvedge edge with a 60 degree angle by placing the ruler's 60 degree line at the bottom of the strip. Then I measured 3" over from the cut edge and cut perfect 3" diamonds.

3" strips cut into 3" equilateral diamonds

 These are the 4 diamonds which will become my jewels.

Four diamonds about to become jewels

I can make a perfect jewel by knowing what size the diamond will finish to (2-1/2"). Half of that is 1-1/4". I take my Creative Grids 60 degree ruler and line it up as shown and cut off a 1-1/4" triangle (discard). A perfect jewel! I cut four of these

Cutting a perfect jewel patch

Now for the black diamonds (the same size as the gold ones above):

Black diamonds cut from 3" strips

And the small red triangles FINISH to 1-1/4", so I cut those from a 1-3/4" strip:

Red triangles cut from a 1-3/4" strip using a 60 degree ruler

Let's see them lined up together! They will be sewn along those two diagonal lines.

• Left side: sew the red triangle, gold jewel and black diamond into a row. Press seams
• Center: Sew the two jewels to the black diamond.
• Right side: sew the black diamond, gold jewel and bottom red triangle together.

Festive Season block patches ready to be sewn

To make my table topper, I made 6 of these blocks. They will finish to 7-1/2". I wanted a center hexagon and decided to fussy cut one of the cardinals from another print in the collection.

Fussy cutting the cardinal using a freezer paper template window.

I interfaced the hexagon shape and he's now ready to add to the center. In order to make the six pieced blocks fit together (without y-seams), I now needed to cut setting triangles to go on both sides of the top of each block. Here is what I mean:

Sew two beige 60 degree triangles to top two sides of 3 blocks. Cut from 4-1/4" strips

 Because the hexagon block finishes to 7-1/2", my triangles will finish to half that: 3-3/4". So, they are cut from 4-1/4" strips.

Sew two red 60 degree triangles to top two sides of 3 blocks. Cut from 4-1/4" strips

And let's see the six blocks sewn into a "circle" with the fussy cut cardinal in the center.

No y-seams, honest! Sew 3 blocks (two with beige triangles and one with red) into a large half-hexagon for the top. Sew 3 blocks (two with red triangles and one with beige) into a large half-hexagon for the bottom. Now sew both together (there will be a very big hole in the middle!)

Six pieced blocks sewn into a ring and then the interfaced cardinal is machine appliqued onto the center

I added an inner and outer border to this and machine quilted it on my HandiQuilter Sweet 16 and here she is. Measures 31" x 36".

Festive Season table topper: 31" x 36"

In between working on this, I made several other hexagon blocks. Allow me!

Double Twisted Hexagon

 I call this Christmas Hexagon Star.

Christmas Hexagon Star from Katja's Hexagon calendar

And one last block using hexagons! This is in her calendar on the date of November 27

Center hexagon, four half-hexagons, two diamonds and two triangles!

Whew! I think I'm tired. But I had such a fabulous time playing with Festive Season. I hope you were inspired and will look at your rulers in a new light. They can do some pretty magical things.