An Asian Inspired Wall Quilt - Part 2

The Design Phase

My design wall came in very handy last night as I gave this quilt more thought.  After putting two and two together, this equation came to mind.  Japanese fabrics plus hexagons equals Japanese lanterns!  And because it has to be a quick quilt, I decided to create just six of them and frame them in a 12" block.

Picked out 6 fabrics for lanterns

Remember that fun and easy technique I told you about in Part 1 of this series?  I'm going to call it the Foil Wrapped Method for constructing hexagons, which eliminates the tedious basting step.  Here's how it's done!

I gathered the ingredients for this wrap, the first of which is aluminum foil, cut into 4" squares.

4" squares of aluminum foil

The second ingredient is the plastic 2" hexagon template. Uh-oh, I found that the plastic template is not heat-resistant!  Look what happened to it!

The plastic warps and shrinks when heat is applied to it!

So I used the paper template, provided by Craftsy (on page 7 of the class materials for the April BOM), and folded down the edges to make the 2" hexagon shape.  This template has to be accurate and sturdy.  The fabric that will be wrapped around it doesn't need to be cut to the exact shape.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Take a look at the paper template I created.

Back of paper template
with edges folded down

Front of paper template

The third ingredient is a piece of fabric, trimmed to 4".

4" piece of fabric

To assemble the wrap, place the ingredients on the ironing surface in the following order:

• 4" square of foil, shiny side up
• 4" fabric, face down
• paper template of hexagon, face down

Assemble the wrap

Now fold the all the edges around the paper template.

Fold down all 6 edges

 Press the front of the foil-wrapped hexagon.

Press front with a hot iron

Press the back of the foil-wrapped hexagon.

Press the creases on the back

Undo the wrap, separating the 3 layers and press the fabric hexagon again.

Separate the layers of the wrap

See how easy that is?  No fiddling with needle and thread, or hand-basting all those edges down!  English- paper-piecing (EPP) will be a breeze from here on!  I found the blog that demonstrated this method for constructing Super Circles.  Brilliant!

Now back to the design board.

Time to preview the six hexies

With the help of Clover bias tape in a black color,

Clover bias tape

 and a little trimming,

Trim excess from lantern

the lanterns look lovely!

Pretty lanterns

Take a look at the lantern on the right of the last row.  It's upside down, but that'll be taken care of in Part 3 of this series, the Construction Phase.  The Clover bias tape is re-positionable until it's sewn down, thank goodness!

So look out for the next segment in this series.

Cheers!