Kaleidoscopes and Stacks, Oh My!

"fairyland" by De Leon Design Group for The Alexander Henry Fabrics Collection

When I was a child, playing with a kaleidoscope was sheer joy, all the colors and shapes moving and reflecting the light.  If you just moved the scope the slightest bit you got a completely different fractal display of color.  

As an adult and a quilter, you can STILL have that sheer joy and with fabric no less!  Can it get any better than that?  I think not. there is a product called Kaleidoscope Kreator 3, inexpensive and filled with creative opportunity.

Kaleidoscope Kreator

Here is a demo video that shows how this works.

Now that is great right?  You can see the possibilities for scrapbooking definitely...well, you can use it for quilting by printing the saved Kaleidoscope onto fabric, or using the template to explore design options for a stack quilt.

Ever wonder if that fabric you purchased will work for a Stack quilt?  Want to see the possible design options before you start cutting fabric?  I took the fabric at the top of the blog and used the Kaleidoscope Kreator and here are just a few of the designs that popped up.  I knew this fabric would be fabulous!

All out of the one fabric!

There are over 65 different template shapes to explore!  Hexagons, circles, squares, stars, you name it!

Do you see the mouse or

 do you see the two fairies sitting next to each other?

Okay, excited?  I thought you might be!  Now, think about this...You are in the fabric store or surfing online and you find what you think will be a perfect fabric for a Kaleidoscope Quilt.  Fabric can be a bit pricy for trial and error purchases.  What happens if you take a photo of an entire repeat of the fabrics that you are interested in...or if you are on the net, download a jpeg of the fabric you like.  Now open those files in your Kaleidoscope Kreator and start playing...see if that fabric is going to do what you want, does it look the way you thought it would?  No?  Nice not to be out $40, $50, $60 or more depending on the number of repeats you need for your quilt.  Do you see the potential?  Audition your fabric and then purchase!  Want to make a one block wonder and not sure if that fabric will work?  Check it out!  Then go create something like this!

Kaffe Fassett One Block Wonder by Karen Meyer

Here is the original fabric that this quilt was created from...

Kaffe Fassett Cloisonne Black

Run, don't walk, spend the $38. or so and get this tool for your quilting arsenal.  If you go to their website, you can purchase the download right there or a CD, they also have a listing of local retailers and of course, it's available on Amazon.com. I have seen it priced as low as $20.  

There is another program that you can use to play with your saved kaleidoscopes once you create them.  Go To BigHugeLabs.com and use their Mosaic Maker to mock up a quilt.  Here are the original fabrics which I photographed at the fabric store, made up into circle stacks and dropped into the Mosaic Maker to mock up a couple possibilties.

Starting fabric and resulting stacks

You can drop in any color background you want, I used the picker on Kaleidoscope Kreator 3 to select the green from the leaf in the print.

Here is another...

So much fun and I didn't purchase or cut either of these fabrics! Both would make good stacks...I didn't select either but opted for the Fairyland fabric instead.  The Mosaic Maker program will also allow you to put larger space between your blocks and use different colors for the "sashing and borders"