Rainbow Recap

 I *should* have been embroidering the last few name sashes for the A to Z project (but I've had to order more white thread), and I *could* have been working on a UFO (heaven knows there are enough of them) but instead I decided to start on the Rainbow Hexagon (because it would be rude not to as Janine sent me the books!)

The original post about the hexagon was [here] and I have read the books (in a skimming sort of way) and printed out the template, but the pieces were far too small for what I pictured, so I used the template to calculate my own larger scale pieces.

I have done the first round, but I'm going to show my workings here so I have some chance of managing to remember (and improve on) what I did when I come back to this.
 
I started with six 60 degree triangles which I joined into a hexagon

From the book I decided that the new stitched line (the lomg side of the new yellow triangle) needed to be twice the length of the existing edge of the same colour.  I used a Frixon pen to mark the area, but that become pointless when I then ironed the fabric after stitching the first line!

As these second round of fabrics overlap each other I could only stitch part of the yellow (the first colour in round 2) long seam, as the green would need to tuck under it at the end.

I had planned to use the foundation piecing method, stitching from the back, but decided to work from the front instead as that seemed easier.  I made myself a plastic template for the rough shape of each triange, cut it out then stitched it on.

Because the pieces weren't cut accurately there was some overlap,

 

so I trimmed back the excess before pressing the new piece into place

When I had gone round and added all six triangles, I could return to the unstitchded yellow seam and lay it over the green to stitch it down

So far this is the result.  I love that it's bright and chunky, but I dont love the second blue which is almost black, and the second purple which looks more like blue in the photo

It's also quite big - each side is 15 inches, and some of my remaining rainbow fabrics are not big enough for the next round of triangles.

I think I need to re-think this idea.

My other hexagons: my basting-while-I'm-waiting-in-the-car-or-on-a-train hexies are looking good but there are two sizes of  print, and in the larger print the three backgrounds (blue, yellow and pink) are not very distinctive.  I could stitch them as flowers and ignore the different print sizes or I could use the larger print to seperate flowers in the small print

Or I could just join them randomly and not bother with flowers at all.  Husband prefers option C, but I do feel that if I'm going to make a traditional hexi quilt top, I should maybe stick with traditional layout too

Wish I could make decisions at the moment!  I need to chose reasonably soon, as I've run out of templates

(And my spell check is still on strike, so apologies for any errors)