Confectionery

After all that talk about taking your finished quilt out into the world for a snazzy photoshoot, I really struggled to make this one happen. Basically, due to the size of the quilt (80"x80"), it was too wide for either hubby or I to hold out straight, so we had a grand plan to use the new photographer's background stand that I'd gotten for Christmas. That was a good news/bad news plan that I'll tell you more about later, but let's just say things didn't go as we'd anticipated. Anyway, on with the story....

This quilt which I've dubbed "Confectionery" has been in the making for over 12 months! That's way longer than I usually spend on one quilt, but when it's a block-of-the-month, that's what you do! This BOM with SMQG was unique in a variety of ways":

• Rather than make a standard block quilt, we started last January by each making a 12.5" unfinished block of our own choosing. 
• Each of the following eight months, a quilt member would design and post a new border. 
• Then for the last three months of the year, as I've mentioned before, I posted finishing technique round ups for the group. 

Overall I really enjoyed making this quilt, though before long I started to seriously doubt my fabric choices. Not that I didn't like them all. I did, alot. But this riot of color on such a large scale overwhelmed me! I persevered, though, and I'm glad I did. I had pulled as much as I could from my stash of prints by Alison Glass, using a variety of low-volume prints as the backgrounds of each border. 

For the backing, I echoed two elements from the front - the churn dash center (etc. etc.), and the 'brick' border. I pretty much figured it out as I went, and have been asked to go into more detail about that, so I hope to also do that in a separate post soon.

Honestly, I wasn't in the mood at that point to do a complicated quilting pattern. My original thought was a diagonal grid, but after marking and sewing just a few lines, I realized I didn't want to go that route, specifically the marking part. Rather, I unpicked and restarted in the center, doing a square spiral using seam-lines as guides and sewing 1" to 1 1/2" apart, depending on each border. I can't say it's overly impressive, but it did the job, works with the quilt design, and I survived to tell about it.

For binding, I used the text print from Alison Glass' Sun Print and Carrie Bloomston's Collage newsprint stripe. My intent was to echo the pair of dark purple corner borders within the quilt, but neither my fabric choice nor the width of the binding contributed to pulling that off. Oh well, I know the little detail is there. 

So mission accomplished. Whew. And I did get to spend a nice afternoon at the beach.

This finish is on my Q1 FAL list! Oh joy.
Linking up with Fabric Tuesday.

Midway Medallions

You've seen my medallion quilt as I've worked on it through the year, and I thought you might enjoy seeing some other medallion works-in-progress. All the makers are members of the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild, and you can see this year's monthly border assignments on our blog. I know there are a few more where I either couldn't identify the maker, or connect for permission to share, so you might want to check out the Instagram hashtag #seamqgbom. But here's most of them, with links to their Instagram accounts if you'd like to see more.

Allison/allisonehs

Jonna/bespokeoutlaw

Bell/golfhead

Louise/imfeelincrafty

Jaci/j_bartol

 Kam/kammart

Rachel/liketosew

Matt/odditease

Matt/odditease (yes, Matt is making 2!)

Rachel/snippetsofsweetness

Jackie/tinwoman48

Debbie/aquilterstable

We've all got at least a couple of borders to go, and I'll be sharing round-up posts for the guild to get us through all the finishing. Here's the first on squaring a quilt, ideas for quilt backs, and basting. I'm excited to see all of these quilts progress!

Making Headway

Ok, you might want to put your sunglasses on...

It's been a while since I've shared progress on my SMQG block of the month medallion quilt. For my 12 1/2" center block, I chose HoosierToni's Skinny Churn Dash. From there I added borders designed by the BOM team. They're all on our guild's website, if you're interested.

Anyway, I'm caught up through July. August's border was just posted, so plenty of hsts are in my future. Then there's just one more border before we start finishing our quilts. Sooo here's my medallion so far!

I'm trying to tame some of the brightness with the low-volume prints, but it's still pretty wild. Stay tuned!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

Medallions

By some sort of oversight, I've failed to blog about this year's SMQG block of the month project - medallion quilts. In January, we all chose our own 12.5" center block. My choice was HoosierToni's Skinny Churn Dash.

One of the fun qualities of this BOM is that each month a different guild member will design the next border. For February, Yeechi/Glass Snail Crawling... shared her checkerboard-type border along with several variations. (Click through for a peek.)

Now for March, Louise/I'm Feelin' Crafty has given us a wonky triangle border. The corners involve inset seams that are a tad tricky, but not too painful.

I'm questioning my palette a bit - not my norm at all. But I'm trying to use favorite stash prints along with some text and other low-volume fabrics, so I'll just keep forging on for now. I'm finding this one border per month routine kinda fun.

Two Blocks

One of my goals for the weekend was to work on my monthly commitments. I'll share 2 of them here, and more tomorrow on Scraptastic Tuesday.

First up, and most challenging, was my block for Kari/craft.happy for Bee Sewcial. Kari requested 10"x16" "poster blocks". In addition to a very interesting palette, we were also given this Pinterest board as inspiration. A painting by Louis Reith caught my eye and totally influenced where I went with my block. Kari's palette of "hot reds, corals and pinks with the muted mint, aqua and mustard, with dove gray, cream and black" was so fun to work with and I tried to include every color. I chose Kona Coral as the background in an effort to really give the block some punch.

In an extreme turn in about every way, I also made the first block for a new quilt. Our guild is doing a unique version of block-of-the-month this year, with each of us making our own medallion quilt. I considered all sorts of more modern (and complicated) blocks, but in the end, I went with a double churn dash, using the Skinny Churn Dash tutorial by Toni/Hoosier Toni. I'm thinking of using plenty of low-volume prints in my quilt with colors based on that center square.

So I'm off to a good start getting my 'must-do's' out of the way, which feels really good.