mystery medallion 2016

The Crystal Lake Modern Quilt Guild is sponsoring a new challenge this year - a Mystery Medallion program where we each create a quilt center block of any size to start and add a border each month for the next five months. The fun (or challenging) part is that no one knows what the requirements for each of the five borders will be; they are revealed month by month. So no planning or scheming ahead of time - just jump in and make it work each month!

My quilt center is an English Paper Pieced (EPP) star on a background of "made fabric" (a bunch of low volume scraps sewn together), and it measures 22.5" square.  The star is machine appliqued to the background with a short straight stitch around the outside edge.

The background fabrics were left over from blocks I made for a quilt shop sample in 2014; it hung there as a sample for quilt kits they were selling, and after that I'm not sure where it ended up. The "plus" blocks were made from a pattern found here.  I really did love it, so one day soon I'll have to make another and keep it for myself (adds yet another project to the much too long already project list.)

The hexagons in my quilt center were made even before 2014 when I was first learning how to EPP one spring break vacation in Florida. I was never sure what to do with them, and at one point they were sewn together in rows. Maybe I was planning to put them on some pillows? Who knows!

But sometime last year I saw a photo of a star made from hexagons so I took the rows apart, and sewed them into the large star shape composed of 73 hexagons. So the star and the background piece have been hanging around on the design wall for quite some time just waiting to be used in a project.

The whole point of a Mystery Medallion Challenge is to let go of control and practice your design and color skills each month when the new border requirements are revealed. At our meeting last weekend we learned that January's border must include snowball blocks and use the color red violet.

RED VIOLET?! Sweet - one of my favorite colors, and I happen to have lots of it in my stash.  I gathered a few fat quarters that were primarily red violet, tossed in a couple more that were primarily yellow (but still contained pink/violet), added a stack of more low volume scraps, and started cutting.

Since my center square measured 22.5" I needed to add a "spacer" border to increase the size to 24.5" in order to accommodate the 4" snowball blocks I planned.  This Peppered Cotton in Fog by Studio E has just enough contrast to set it apart from the backgrounds, but it doesn't overwhelm and grab all the attention.  It was cut at 1.5" width to finish at 1".

The 28 snowball blocks are each 4" finished, so now the quilt center measures 32.5".  I cut each center of the snowballs at 4.5" square and each corner background fabric at 1.75" square.  You can find a handy tutorial for making snowball blocks here.  Mine look more like stop signs (I probably should have made the corner pieces smaller) but whatever - I love how it's turned out!

Even if you aren't a member of CLMQG, you can follow along and make your own Mystery Medallion quilt.  Each month the new border requirements will be posted on our website, and photos of members' progress can be found on our Facebook page.

Sunny's quilt

And now a flashback to November 2015 to show you a secret project...

You may remember that in 2014 I made a quilt for each of my five sisters-in-law on my husband's side of the family.  In 2015 I was on easy street because I only have one sister-in-law on my side!

Sunny (Allysun) is my youngest brother's wife, and her personality is just like her name - happy, smiling, cheerful, sunny.  Their living room is decorated in greys, black, and pops of gold and yellow, so of course her quilt had to be primarily yellow :)

Her Twisted Blossoms quilt was made using the Quick Curve ruler and Metro Twist pattern (both from Sew Kind of Wonderful) and their quilt along found here.  That ruler requires a firm "measure twice, measure again, then cut" mentality; I wasted a good chunk of fabric when I first started cutting.  But once I realized my error and re-read the directions it was all smooth sailing from then on.  The curves are so slight that sewing the convex and concave units together was quite easy - no pins! - and the blocks are trimmed to size after sewing so it's nearly foolproof.  IF you carefully measure before cutting ;-)

I made 12 blocks using different yellow and grey prints combined with Kona Cotton in Snow.  Petals of each blossom block are formed by four sections cut and trimmed with the Quick Curve ruler and four modified half square triangle blocks.  The center squares are all unique grey prints combined with the Kona Snow to form a square-within-a-square.

Then it's a basic nine-patch construction for each block finishing at 16" square.

I switched up the final assembly of the quilt adding 2" finished sashing and grey cornerstones between each block and around the outer edge - it just needed a little something more than the blocks right next to each other could provide.  So with the added sashing the quilt finished at 56" x 74" - a generous lap size.

The quilting was done by Carol Linder in Hampshire, IL using the pattern "Random Clams" by Jessica Schick in a silver grey thread.  The binding is a white dot on charcoal grey from Jen Kingwell's recent Moda line "Gardenvale".

Sunny seemed thrilled with her new quilt when I presented it to her at Thanksgiving, and she later sent me a photo if it in their living room.  Great color matching if I do say so myself!

I have so many works-in-progress right now that it's a bit embarrassing.  But I still managed to start two new projects last week!  One of them is being quilted right now, and I hope to bring you photos of it completely finished next week.  Maybe one day soon I'll count all the UFOs again and publicly confess the number...