Tessellation Tutorial - I'm working on it - Stay tuned

I have posted tessellation quilts by my students and the response from those of you who read my blog has been overwhelming.

This work is by Suzie McCormack and she has already chosen a background/border fabric.

I have my own way of doing these and I offered to do a tutorial.
I am working on the tutorial but sometimes life gets in the way.
Life is good and it is moving to fast for me this year.

I will be posting one so hopefully if you are one of those people who asked how to do it please be patient and stay tuned.

I know I have shown these twice but for all of you who just started reading my blog, I am going to share them again. I think there have been well over 5000 new viewers this week.


I came up with a way of doing interesting tessellations. The students didn't sew them together, they fused them to a background. This allowed them the freedom to create shapes that would be next to impossible to piece.
I am showing you several without names. When I am teaching it is difficult to get time to take photos, much less get the names recorded. If anyone sees your work please let me know and I'll add your name to it.



These are all works in progress. The students get enough information to finish their work and also to be able to repeat the technique again with different shapes, colors and sizes.



This particular tessellation looks like birds. Generally I suggest just cutting and playing and eventually you will come up with something you like.


The artist who used tessellations most was Escher. One famous tessellation by him consists of birds that change to fish as the design progresses across the surface.
The shape doesn't change - just the details he has drawn/painted on them.



I hope you can see how interesting this piece is in spite of my poor photography. When rushing to get things photographed I don't have the skills nor time to get the best photos but I still like to record students work when possible.


Tessellations are a very interesting process, fun and so much easier than they look. I have also seen some instructions to do them that make them super difficult and something I think that most people would avoid at all costs!

There are several pieces in my The Colors Of My Life series that are tessellations designed simply with squares.

The choice of a puzzle tonight was easy - birds and with a bird cut!