Rainbow explosion

My sewing room looks as though it's been host to a rainbow explosion!

For a while I've been wanting to make a quilt using equilateral (60-degree) triangles. The main thing holding me back is that I didn't just want plain triangles, and as far as I know, my EQ7 design software won't allow me to design triangle-shaped blocks - although it will do a one-patch quilt layout in any 3- or 4-sided shape. Which of course also means it can't then generate templates and so on if I want them. I'm quite capable of most of the maths (some of my high-school maths teachers would be pleased with how much geometry and trigonometry I use - and would probably have been even more pleased had I realised back then how useful I'd find their subject and focussed a little more!) but because it wasn't an option, every time I started playing with designs in EQ, they would never be triangle-based. As a side note, if you ever need to calculate triangle measurements, websites such as this triangle calculator  will do it for you; as long as you know at least 3 details (all 3 side measurements, 1 angle and 2 sides or 2 angles and one side) it will work out the rest for you!

So a couple of weeks ago I sat down with a pencil and started sketching ideas and worked out a few concepts I liked. But when I used EQ to create a layout of plain triangles to give me more accurate final dimensions, I realised my drawings had been out of proportion, despite my best efforts, and instead of needing a 9 x 10 layout, what I needed was 11 x 9! So I printed out the layout, and then pencilled in the piecing within each triangle (I kept it fairly simple) and adapted the design as I went.

I thought I had a ruler for it (which was part of the reason for wanting to make it), but a lot of searching only yielded a right-angle triangle, so I went and bought one - by this stage I was too committed to pull out! My studio is well overdue for a thorough sort and tidy, and I do wonder if I'll find it when I get around to tidying up...

Another of my aims for this quilt was to use larger pieces to make the fabrics a focus (easily achieved, since I was designing by hand!). And I had in mind that I'd actually use a single range of fabric. I have a few stacks I was considering, and was leaning towards some Amy Butler. But then I settled on a name for the quilt - Hide and Seek; it's going to be a little girl's bed quilt. And what could be more perfect for a quilt of that name than Tula Pink fabric, with all the hidden creatures? It didn't take me long to decide to cut into my stash of The Birds and The Bees, and soon I had a few rainbow piles of triangles and associated shapes ready to piece together. Another bonus of this decision, is that I can enter Sara's Tula Pink Sew-along. I've already joined the solid components to the prints to make the complete triangles, and am now laying them out according to my design to get a good balance of colour and prints across the quilt - but only 4 of the 9 rows fit on my sewing table! I think I'll layout and sew them a few at a time, and hope that with a bit of care, I'll be left with a decent selection for the bottom few rows, and won't have to unpick earlier ones and swap them around!