A Kaleidoscope

What a roller coaster ride I had on the Wicked blog hop. I found so many wonderful blogs and I even found another Halloween blog hop! I will be signing up for more blog hops at Madam Sams.

I can't even remember how I found an amazing Russian blog. Maybe on Pinterest - but my Pinterest fun is a whole other story. Let me try and keep on track here.

The Kaleidoscope Table Topper

Can't believe I have never noticed a pattern like this before.

I have this ridiculous fascination with the natural order of things and what could be more intriguing than making equilateral triangles from tubes and rectangles then jostling them around til a pleasant pattern forms. 

Choosing the right colour mix is pretty important as I found out. This topper has 12 dark attached to light fabric then 6 medium attached to dark fabric and 6 medium attached to light fabric for the centre. I am sure if you play around a bit there could be lots more amazing combinations.

The idea for my topper comes from http://roolen.blogspot.com.au/ 

Marina lives in Russia and I had to use Google translator to read her name but the projects speak for themselves. Her fabulous topper tutorial is here.

There is also a link to some further explanation about the equilateral triangles at Quilt studio

Marina has lots of tutorials and some great project ideas.

Here are the basic steps for the topper

1. Choose your fabrics and cut out the strips. Mine are 9.5 cm wide (around 4 inches would do). Sew two strips right sides together on each long side with a 0.5 cm seam. 0.5 cm is in between 1/8 and 1/4 inch and my satin stitch foot is made for stitching 0.5 cm.

2. Work out a line that slopes at 30 degrees and goes from seam line to seam line. Mark where it comes to on the tube. This is how big to cut your rectangle pieces. Mine measured 16 cm. Cut 3 rectangles to get 6 triangles.

3. For the 12 dark and light triangles you need to make 6 with the dark on the right and 6 with the dark on the left. Cut 3 rectangles down from left to right and 3 rectangles down from right to left.

4. Cut all the triangles and I pressed the seams open. Play around to get a good look.

I settle on this one.

5. Sew the triangles to make 4 rows then sew them together.

I didn't want to spend too much time quilting so I decided on some straight lines. I used one of the medium colour fabrics for the binding. I sewed it on the front, turned it to the back then on the front stitched in the ditch with nylon thread.

You can see the quilting here.

I love my new cake stand and cake slice

Sometimes I like to 'stitch outside the ditch'. Now I really should get back to the not nearly finished enough cat quilt.

image source

Any suggestions for some interesting short projects that you may have tried?  

I'd love to hear them.