I never met a rainbow color layout that I didn't LOVE!

A few years ago I attended the Chicago Flower and Garden Show with my husband. The most captivating display was a huge, undulating bed of annuals and perennials arranged into a living, flowing color spectrum. It was breathtaking! At the time we did not have a digital camera (and who knows where the photos are now?) but apparently the idea has stayed with me and found an outlet in my next quilting project...


While on vacation I managed to get these rainbow-hued hexagons paper-pieced. They are all 1" hexagons, which is the length of each side of the hexagon. So before I left, I cut 2.5" squares from about 100 unique fabrics in my scrap bin and 100 paper hexagon forms that I printed from Melanie at texasfreckles. She has organized a piece-along, and at her blog you can find instructions and templates for different sized hexies. She is planning to make a charm quilt (all unique fabrics) from - get this - 1198 hexagons! Well, I am going to be content with just getting my little group of 90 or so put together for a pillow top. I am usually a strong believer in the motto that "if some is good, then MORE is BETTER", but not in this case. They are cute and fun, and the piecing of these little beauties goes pretty quickly, but I have got way too many things in the backlog pile to commit to any more than this.

I'm planning to put this grouping on a bleached white or snow solid background, do some random quilting, and end up with a fun summer throw pillow. Somewhere on flickr I saw a similar color scheme of hexies on a white background, but arranged more like a flowing bed of flowers on a table runner - BEAUTIFUL! Many of my scrap floral fabrics are from an old Moda line called Wildflowers by Rick Vanderpool. They have found their way into lots of projects at my house - a jelly roll bag, an apron, a hearts stack-and-whack quilt. It will be appearing next in a modified bento box pillow (tutorial at filminthefridge) to go with my hexagon pillow.

Maybe someday I'll get my color-spectrum garden bed, but until then I'll be content with all these lovely quilting projects! ENJOY THE DAY!