Puzzling Through the Eye Spy

This week was kind of crazy week work-wise for us. As I result, last night was the first time I got back to the Eye Spy. I spent the time with a bit of sewing, a bit of cutting and lot of puzzling. I am puzzling through the best way to put it together. As you may know, I like to jump right in and start sewing. This gets me into trouble sometimes, but I do enjoy just sewing. Puzzling through problems isn’t so bad as I can’t always visualize the whole process. Of course, if the problems become too problematic then the quilt pieces usually go back into the closet.

I started working on the sewing on that Sunday where I introduced the piece but I didn’t take the edges into account. I am very much into my self bordering technique and would like to use it here. I used it on the Interlocking Triangles quilts and some others. Essentially it means that I don’t like to hack off bits of a border block to end the quilt.


I attempted to work on this yesterday while I was sewing triangles to hexagons. My dilemma, defined, is that I really don’t want to just randomly hack off the edges to make a straight side. Nor do I want to apply a binding to an edge that needs a miter every two inches.

First, I broke the hexagons I have sewed into two groups. Left, the pieces are arranged in a way where the triangles are pointing up. In this orientation, there are no straight edges. The side edges could be okay with a slightly irregular edge made by putting the piece together in chunks using diamonds (see far left).

The top and bottom edges would be a piecing nightmare, however, because I would have to inset triangles somehow. I can imagine that this would be a top that ended up becoming a permanent member of the UFO/ WIP list.

Right, the hexagons are arranged in a way where the triangles are pointed to the left. This is the way that Simply Quilts suggested putting this top together and what the directions on the package of templates suggest. Still, hacking off the edges to make this work makes me cringe. I was considering putting fabrics that were allover prints on the edges so the mutilation wouldn’t be as brutal. I don’t know.

Options:

  1. Hack off the top & bottom or the sides, depending on layout.
  2. Choose to piece the quilt in chunks using diamonds and do inset piecing to make a straight edge along the top and bottom.
  3. Deal with very uneven edge in the binding process.
  4. Add some other shaped pieces to the edge in a uniform color (more red?) to make the edge square.

Left is a detail of the corner of the piece with the section I have sewn together and arranged with the triangles placed pointing left.

I’ll have to troll the web and look at what others have done.

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

2 thoughts on “Puzzling Through the Eye Spy”

  1. I’m not sure I’m following the dilemma exactly, but… seems to me that you need to make a template for a piece that is half the equilateral triangle piece (divided in half from the point down to the bottom of the triangle — please forgive the lack of appropriate geometry terms, it’s been 30 years since I took geometry!). You would then self-border by finishing with red hexagons and red half-triangle pieces to get a straight edge… I think. I’ll try to draw something and send to you to show what I mean.

  2. Basically the dilemma is dealing with the edges. Either way that I sew the hexagons together will result in a jagged edge. I was thinking about idea you describe as well. Lots of unformed ideas floating around my mind.

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