Hexagons Gone Wild

For many years Leslie Tucker Jenison and I have taught a class "Painting with a Twist." It is a collaboration of sorts, where students paint on primed canvas, and change places about every 10 minutes or so. We don't want anyone to become too attached to their spot on the canvas.  It truly is a very relaxing class and very fun to see how each canvas comes out totally differently than the last.  At the end of class, the canvas is cut up and each student gets a section, or sections, depending on how many people are in the class.  So, I have a huge collection of slices of the painted canvas.

What if?  Enter Fabi by Sizzix.  It's a Big Shot with a new name for fabric!

The Sizzix sandwich.  Cutting pad, Die, and fabric, and in this case 4 layers of painted canvas, and then another cutting pad.  If I was using regular quilting fabric, I could cut up to 7 layers at a time.

My hexagon quilt is growing.  It sat for weeks on my cutting table, while I met some very important deadlines for other projects.  People who came to visit with me were intrigued by these painted hexagons.

On a Friday - that's the day that I don't work on anything with a deadline, I decided to cut up everything and put this together. None of these were fused, and I didn't want to use pins to secure them to wool blended felt.  So, I measured out some Mistyfuse, folding it over in sections that were about the same size as the hexagon, and cut them on the Sizzix machine.  That way I had the perfect size that would be placed under each painted Hexi. Note:  you pull them apart from the middle.

Monday came, and I decided to keep working on this until it was done.  All fused.  I free motion machine quilted it around each hexagon and then added more stitching to each hexagon, to follow a paint line.  It measures about 31x32.  I am so happy with how it turned out.  This could become another class!

You can see that the hexagons were spaced so that the black felt could show through. Hexagons Gone Wild. We are teaching the painted canvas part in Houston this year.  It's a 3 hour class.  #548 on Friday, October 30th from 9am to Noon.  You just bring your apron and we'll have some fun painting with a Twist! IQF website is here