Last week was remarkable for the amount of time I didn’t spend in my sewing room. The week was completely taken up with appointments, errands, holiday shopping and decorating, a couple of parties, and — it must be admitted — way too many Scrabble games.

At least I got the blocks put together for my Season to Taste table runner:

I’m making a version of Season to Taste for each of the four seasons. This one is the summer version, and I’m going to call it Sun Flowers. The pale gray background fabric (from the Painter’s Canvas line by Laura Gunn for Michael Miller) reminds me of a summer sky at first light.

The kaleidoscope blocks went together very easily but I am unhappy that the centers of the middle and bottom blocks don’t match exactly. It appears a couple of the repeats were just a smidge off when I cut through the eight layers of my focus fabric. With a kaleido block, being off even a sixteenth of an inch can make a difference.

Since Sun Flowers is destined to be a wall hanging, I’m going to place a vintage yellow button in the center of each kaleidoscope block. I auditioned a few buttons in my collection:

I’m going to pretend that adding the buttons was a design choice rather than a ploy to cover my cutting error. You won’t tell anyone, will you?

Last week I wrapped up Part 2 of a kaleidoscope table runner class at the Pine Needle Quilt Shop. The class sprang from two table runners I had made earlier this year — same design but totally different outcomes because of the fabric choices. I wrote about them in this post in March.

Both runners appear on the cover of my latest pattern, Season to Taste:

That’s Autumn Reflections on the left and a springtime version, Under Paris Skies, on the right. I’m thinking about making a summer and winter version, which will give me a quartet of seasonal table runners made from the same pattern, each very different from one another.

My summer version may already be in the works. For the kaleido block I was demonstrating in class, I used this floral fabric from the Gray Matters collection by Jacqueline Savage Mcfee for Camelot Cottons:

Yes, there’s a lot of gray in this piece of fabric but it’s offset by a sunny yellow and bright gold. The white brightens it up even more. I bought a piece of the floral last year and was so excited when it was reissued this year along with some fabulous companion fabrics. Between the Pine Needle and Hawthorne Threads, I picked up several pieces in the line that will definitely find their way into another quilt.

Are you curious to see what this print looks like as a kaleido block? Well, here ’tis:

That’s French for “Under Paris Skies.” It’s the name of a song I bet you’d recognize if I hummed a few bars. It’s also the name of my newly finished little quilt:

Under Paris Skies measures about 18″ x 55″. I used eight different fabrics in the octagons, five of them fussy-cut. No matter which way you turn the quilt, you see vignettes of Parisians young and old enjoying a spring day in the City of Light. There’s an Eiffel Tower in each block, too.

The quilt below, which I finished a few weeks ago, is the same size and design but has a completely different look, more like a real kaleidoscope viewed through a tube made of bits of colored glass or paper. When the tube is rotated, the reflections produce changing patterns that are visible through an eyehole.

This quilt is named Autumn Reflections. The focus fabric, from the Autumn Harvest line by Jason Yenter for In the Beginning Fabrics, has pumpkins on it, big leaves, and grapes or berries. You’d never know it from looking at the finished blocks, though. Interesting how cutting up the focus fabric into 45 degree wedges completely changes what you see.

I’m going to be teaching a class in June on this design. Students can make their quilt with eight repeats of fabric, as in the autumn version, or eight different fabrics, as in the spring version. Vive le différence!

The photos in yesterday’s post didn’t do justice to Gay Paree, the new Michael Miller fabric I just used in a kaleidoscope table runner. Gay Paree is a novelty fabric featuring slightly abstract scenes of Paris. There’s a young couple sitting at an outdoor café, a little girl buying flowers from a street vendor, another vendor selling baguettes, and a nun feeding birds. There’s also a smartly dressed woman walking her dogs — poodles, of course — near the Eiffel Tower and a sailor kissing his sweetheart by a fountain. A whimsical panorama indeed:

I fussy-cut six different images from the fabric and inserted them randomly, two to a block, in my table runner:

You may be wondering what this Gay Paree fabric has to do with Pantone. Do you know about Pantone? It’s an American corporation best known for its standardized color reproduction system, known as PMS (Pantone Matching System). The system is used in a variety of industries where accurate color reproduction is really important — printing, of course, but also in the manufacture of paint and fabrics.

Every year Pantone declares a “Color of the Year,” which guides consumer-oriented companies — think florists, fashion designers, fabric manufacturers — in product design and future planning. I happened to be in a paint store the other day and stopped in front of a Pantone display, which featured the three most recent Colors of the Year. The 2012 Pantone Color of the Year — Tangerine Tango — was the very shade of orange-y red in my Gay Paree fabric! Take a look:

It just so happens that Gay Paree comes in two other colorways: a bright emerald green and a vibrant orchid:

And it also just so happens that Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2013 is Emerald and 2014’s color is Radiant Orchid:

Coincidence? I think not! Savvy marketing? Mais oui!

I’ve been taking a little break from Reach for the Stars (see previous post) to make a new kaleidoscope runner, a second version of the one in fall fabrics I showed you a few weeks ago. This runner features some delightful new Paris-themed fabrics from Michael Miller with a contemporary vibe. Take a look:

This close-up of one block gives you a better look at the fabrics:

The Parisian street scenes were fussy-cut from Gay Paree, the new line from Michael Miller, as was the Eiffel Tower, an older Michael Miller line. The navy-on-white and white-on-navy house prints are from the Maison line by Michael Miller, companion prints to Gay Paree. Fans of Violet Craft’s Waterfront Park collection for Michael Miller will recognize the two bright orange pieces from that line, and the remaining white-on-navy geometric is a Mini Mike from Michael Miller.

That bright orange accent strip is a batik and the outer sashing strip is Tangle by Marcia Derse for Windham Fabrics. My background fabric is a pale grey Color Weave by P&B Textiles. I usually piece my backs but I’m going to put an uncut length of the Gay Paree fabric on the back so that the Parisian street scenes can be seen in their entirety.

I’m going to quilt this little table runner/wall hanging with straight lines or maybe simple cross-hatching and bind it in the same orange batik I used for the accent strips.

Over the last few years I’ve made at least a dozen kaleidoscope quilts featuring octagons, all made from eight repeats of one fabric carefully stacked, pinned, and cut. This is the first time I’ve used eight different fabrics in a block. What fun!