Taking on Nana M.

You know those times when you see a quilt somewhere that catches your eye, and despite all the totally rational reasons you know why you shouldn't take it on, you just can't resist? I had one of those moments when I saw the Nana McIntyre design shared by Jodi Godfrey on Tales of Cloth.

It sort of devolved into a devil-on-one-shoulder, angel-on-the-other situation. "It looks so fun!" "What about all your other unfinished tops?" "...really, what's one more?" Then suddenly, I found myself cutting up fat quarters and in came the rationalizations: It'll be a good stash buster! (It actually really is. I've pulled out so many fabrics I purchased ages ago that weren't the right palette for projects I was working on or that I bought just because they're pretty without any real plan for them.) Such good practice for inset seams! (Also true! I find the sense of accomplishment involved in finishing an inset seam kind of unbeatable.)

The center here is from Sunnyside by Kate Spain, and the diamonds are from Terrain, also a Kate Spain line. The petals of the central "flower" are Kona Torch, a sunny bright orange that I love. (I used to be very anti-orange, and I think quilting has really prompted me to embrace the color.) The rest includes prints from Heather Ross, Denyse Schmidt, Lizzy House, V &. Co, and Darlene Zimmerman, among others.

I didn't have any diamond or jewel papers handy, so while Jodi's project uses EPP, I got out my Jaybird Quilts Sidekick and Hex-N-More rulers to cut the pieces, using the 2 1/2" hexagon for the "flower" centers, 3 1/2" jewels, 2 1/2" diamonds, and the bigger hexagons are the 4 1/2" size. It's a bit bigger than the size of Jodi's EPP. For comparison, the pink hexie is 2"-edge EPP, and the aqua was cut with the 4 1/2" measure on the Hex-N-More.

As previously mentioned, this method uses a lot of inset seams. The more I work on it, the more I feel like that's part of what drew me to this design. The repeat of the sew-press-trim of blocks with lots of HSTs and flying geese was maybe getting to me a little, and I think my brain has really sparked to the jigsaw puzzle aspect of making all these pieces fit together.

There's so much potential in this design for interesting fabric choices. It could lend itself well to the kind of fabric selection and fussy cutting that's come to characterize the La Passacaglia, but without so many pieces. I think it would be interesting with designers who utilize a similar palette across multiple lines, like Fig Tree, or designers who take a lot of inspiration from 20th-century vintage prints, like Denyse Schmidt or American Jane. The initial prompt of Jodi's original in working with solids make me think it would work well incorporating some of Robert Kaufman's new 12-color Kona bundles in specific color families.

My plan is to build out to the next ring of "flowers" with surrounding hexagons, then assess based on size and see if I want to keep going, as well as whether I want to try to build it out to a rectangle or keep the shape hexagonal. I already know I want to make at least two more of these, so it may end up being a ubiquitous pattern here.