Kaleidoscopes

I gathered up all my kaleidoscope toys for quilting and never realized how different they are from each other. The two mirrors that are taped together are a great tool for choosing fabrics for a stack and whack quilt. The angle can be changed to see how many segments in a block.   It also reveals fabrics that might be a poor choice.  My original plan was to use the bird fabric but as you can see with the large areas of spruce green background there would be some blocks that were lacking in interest and probably very few blocks with whole birds unless I fussy cut and then I would have needed a lot more yardage. So I bought the coordinating flower fabric because the motifs were closer together.
The dragon fly eyes will repeat a motif in a side by side setting or turn it a little for an on point setting but they do not reflect the design like a kaleidoscope.  The red is a child's toy with six sided facets in the lens, the dark one has high quality glass with four sided facets.  The brass spy glass has a clear marble in the other end,  it miniaturizes the designs into hexagon repeats.  They are all fun to look through.  Sometimes I'm so easily amused.  --Ann--