Previous Installments:
Starting My Dream Quilt
Catan Hexagon Quilt Update #1
Catan Hexagon Quilt Update #2
Unfortunately, I've had some major setbacks with this quilt. The first is personal: I spent so much of my free tv watching time holding the baby over the past 8 months that I haven't had much time for hand sewing. The second is medical: I have carpal tunnel in my wrists that has flared up very painfully recently and makes basting hexes slower than usual. The third is...design issues. This is what this post is going to be about.
The land continent hexes are all complete and sewn together into large pieces, so I started working on basting the water hexes. I have collected a variety of blues over the course of the year and a half I have been working on this project, and rejected some (the greens in the lower right of the picture, for example) and then decided to go with a more uniform color pallet and started exclusively basting the slate-blue colored waters that you see in the top right/middle of the picture below. I basted probably 100 of those, and I wanted to lay out the quilt to see how it was going, which I did last night.
And I'm glad I did, because I discovered a glaring problem! The slate-blue hexes look TERRIBLE. When I picked blues that would "go" with the land hexes I already made, I destroyed all contrast. You can't tell where the land ends and the ocean begins. It looks kinda cool, but also kinda...drab and boring. I totally hate it. I noticed it when I first started laying them down, so I went through my box of basted hexes and laid every single one to see which colors DID look good. And I decided on these:
These are the ones in the lower middle between the two big hex continents. They are more saturated and oceany. These were some of the first blues that I bought, actually. I abandoned this colorway for the slate-blue because I was worried that this bright, saturated blue would look too "cartoony" and weird, since I want a Catan-themed quilt, not a literal photo of the Catan game board in quilt form. But when I layed it out, I guess it turns out that I do like the more literal Catan board colors. They are iconic and really fun to look at, and liven up the whole quilt.
So. I need to find these fabrics (or more fabrics in this same color/shade/tone family) and keep on basting ocean hexes. I was feeling pretty down about it last night (I've done SO MUCH useless work!!) but earlier in the week I was complaining about the someday when I might not have any more hexes to baste and how boring that would be!
I may still throw a few random darker/lighter blue hexes in for interest, but I think the majority of the ocean hexes should be just four or so patterns, and they have to be really subtle patterns with not a lot of contrast within the hex itself.
I'm also having second thoughts about my arrangement of the land continents...but I'll tackle that later. Thankfully I have plenty of leftover fabric and can baste a hundred or so more land hexagons if needed. I'll just have to think on it some more and play around with the layout.
Starting My Dream Quilt
Catan Hexagon Quilt Update #1
Catan Hexagon Quilt Update #2
Unfortunately, I've had some major setbacks with this quilt. The first is personal: I spent so much of my free tv watching time holding the baby over the past 8 months that I haven't had much time for hand sewing. The second is medical: I have carpal tunnel in my wrists that has flared up very painfully recently and makes basting hexes slower than usual. The third is...design issues. This is what this post is going to be about.
The land continent hexes are all complete and sewn together into large pieces, so I started working on basting the water hexes. I have collected a variety of blues over the course of the year and a half I have been working on this project, and rejected some (the greens in the lower right of the picture, for example) and then decided to go with a more uniform color pallet and started exclusively basting the slate-blue colored waters that you see in the top right/middle of the picture below. I basted probably 100 of those, and I wanted to lay out the quilt to see how it was going, which I did last night.
And I'm glad I did, because I discovered a glaring problem! The slate-blue hexes look TERRIBLE. When I picked blues that would "go" with the land hexes I already made, I destroyed all contrast. You can't tell where the land ends and the ocean begins. It looks kinda cool, but also kinda...drab and boring. I totally hate it. I noticed it when I first started laying them down, so I went through my box of basted hexes and laid every single one to see which colors DID look good. And I decided on these:
These are the ones in the lower middle between the two big hex continents. They are more saturated and oceany. These were some of the first blues that I bought, actually. I abandoned this colorway for the slate-blue because I was worried that this bright, saturated blue would look too "cartoony" and weird, since I want a Catan-themed quilt, not a literal photo of the Catan game board in quilt form. But when I layed it out, I guess it turns out that I do like the more literal Catan board colors. They are iconic and really fun to look at, and liven up the whole quilt.
So. I need to find these fabrics (or more fabrics in this same color/shade/tone family) and keep on basting ocean hexes. I was feeling pretty down about it last night (I've done SO MUCH useless work!!) but earlier in the week I was complaining about the someday when I might not have any more hexes to baste and how boring that would be!
I may still throw a few random darker/lighter blue hexes in for interest, but I think the majority of the ocean hexes should be just four or so patterns, and they have to be really subtle patterns with not a lot of contrast within the hex itself.
I'm also having second thoughts about my arrangement of the land continents...but I'll tackle that later. Thankfully I have plenty of leftover fabric and can baste a hundred or so more land hexagons if needed. I'll just have to think on it some more and play around with the layout.
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