A Finish! Gwennie Inspired Medallion

Gwennie Inspired Medallion

60 x 69

Hand Quilted

Basking in the glow of the morning sunrise. 

I don't normally make medallion quilts for the same reason I don't normally border quilts - I can never think of what to add for a border. 

In May 2016 Lori of Humble Quilts came up with the idea of a Gwen Marston inspired medallion quilt along. Each person would do their own thing make a center medallion and add rounds each month based on a prompt.  Ok...I joined in thinking that if I had prompts I might be able to make a medallion. 

The center prompt was BASKET.   Good.  I won a bunch of baskets from Block Lotto so I was ready and off to a good start. 

 And then the second prompt was CHILDHOOD.  Yikes!!  

I finally came up with weaving for my childhood prompted round and used some brown fabric that looked like a basket and wove some red, yellow and blue fabrics through it.   I really never liked dolls when I was little but preferred books and crafts.  One of the crafts I have liked through the years has been weaving starting with those potholder looms with loops that make a worthless potholder. I still have one of those looms.  I also still have a small loom that I used to weave belts and a rug (in strips).  I have looms that "knit" stocking caps.  And I've woven several baskets. 

The next prompt was LOG CABIN.  So I made little 3 inch quarter log cabins and used the traditional red fabric for the center - red fabric with baskets on it. 

Next prompt was STAR.  So I made little 3 inch friendship stars  from my 1.5 inch scraps and "wove" them in with red/white rail fence blocks.   I used any color of scraps for the star backgrounds since there were baskets in many colors in the center. 

And then came FISH for a prompt. Fish? Seriously?   I finally ended up with blue and white HST waves and some of the blue fabrics even had fish in them. How's that for using the old gray cells? 

And then I hand quilted it every which way, this way and that way.  (Have you ever seen a lassie go this way and that way?) 

And then I used a red basket weave looking fabric for the back. 

You may or may not know that I have a wringer washer and not some newfangled washer so wash everything pretty much by hand (by choice).   Since I had used a red backing I put the quilt in the washtub with three new color catchers and two old color catchers that hadn't caught any color.  I really haven't ever had much of a problem with bleeding but there's always a first time so I'm always a little cautious and go heavy on color catchers.  Then what to my wandering eyes should appear but red, red, red, red water. RED. REALLY RED.  And the color catchers were RED. REALLY RED.  I pulled that quilt out as fast as could be and threw it into the other wash tub and grabbed the Dawn and followed Vicki Welsh's directions to save a bleeding quilt. 

Then I hung it out on the line in the freezing cold because it had too much water in it to go in the dryer right away.  Quilts don't easily go through the wringer so I just squeeze out as much water as I can.  I would have put it on the drying rack in the basement but it had some sweaters drying on it.   Anyway...I found out how freeze drying works!  After a day on the clothesline in the freezing temps that quilt was stiff as a board.  I let it thaw a little and then put it in the dryer. 

And there you have it.  I made a medallion quilt! 

Moving it Forward Monday at Em's Scrapbag

Getting this finished was my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for November. 

This was my goal #7
for
Q4 Finish-Along

Gwennie Inspired Medallion: Something's Fishy

I know I'm a little early posting my final round of the Gwennie Inspired Medallion Quilt-along but I'm going out of town tomorrow after work and won't be back until possibly Oct 3 for a couple of days before I have to leave again so decided to get this post out of the way.  (I'm one of those goal oriented, plan ahead type As, don't you know).

So, without further ado...here's my flimsy. It will finish at 60 x 69. 

The theme for the center medallion was BASKETS. 

 I used some of the Block Lotto basket block winnings for my center. 

Next round the theme was CHILDHOOD. Remember those woven potholders you probably made when you were a kid with those red looms? I loved making those when I was a little girl even though they weren't very practical as potholders. I graduated to other looms, none of them big, but I have made a lot of woven things including weaving a couple of baskets.  So, I made some woven blocks for my CHILDHOOD themed border.  

The next round's theme was LOG CABIN. So I made some neutral quarter log cabins (or are they half log cabins?)  I thought to use neutrals because the baskets were on neutral background and I used the traditional red center representing the hearth which happened to have some little baskets on it.   

The next round after that was STARS.  I made friendship stars because friends from Block Lotto made me the baskets I used in the center. And then I used red/white rails between the stars  because I used red in the other borders and I like red.  The rails seemed to me to also continue a weaving kind of theme.  So far all the border blocks have been three inch finished size. 

And then came the final round with a theme of FISH. FISH?! Seriously? Well, I thought long and hard and came up with WAVES for my border.  That's why the final border is blue. Fish live in the water and sometimes there are waves in the water where the fish live.  

As you can see...there's some fish in those waves swimming up current and some fish bubbles and some other flotsam and jetsam. 

I also spy a whale, more fish, anchors and more flotsam and jetsam in those waves which consist of HSTs that will finish at 3 inches. 

So that's my Gwennie Inspired Medallion Top.  Gosh that was fun! 

I also had started a second one but that is stalled for now. 

And now I have to say that I think that the making of this medallion could be considered improv quilting -  I had no idea what it would look like in the end when I started, bought nothing, used no pattern, used a variety of scraps and bits and pieces, had to use a little creativity to interpret a given theme for each round and even though each of us that quilted along used the same theme for each round not a single one of our quilts will look the same.  Gosh that's fun!

Ad Hoc Improv Quilting with Ann and Kaja.

Gwennie Inspired Medallion - Stars

I was only able to find time to add the stars border to one of my Gwennie Medallions this month. 

That brings the size to 54 x 63

I dug into my 1.5 inch scraps and made some little 3 inch Friendship Stars...

...and alternated them with some little 3 inch rails.  I kind of wanted to keep something that looked like weaving plus repeat some of the colors in the basket blocks. 

I know what I'm going to do for the star border on my other Gwennie...just need to get it done.

Looking forward to the next theme!  Which I now see is "something fishy". Hmmmm....

To see what everyone else has been working on:

Gwennie Inspired Medallions 

Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL- Log Cabin Themed Borders

For this round of the Gwennie QAL the border theme is log cabins.  For my first quilt I made lots of little 3 inch quarter log cabins with red centers and 1.5 inch neutral strips and arranged them randomly for the border. 

Some of the red centers even have little baskets in them.  

For quilt # 2 I also used 1.5 inch strips in red and brown with some yummy treats thrown in for fun and... 

... I just sewed the strips log cabin style around the entire center.

Next border looks like it will be a star theme. Hmmm...

The Gwennie QAL link up is at Humble Quilts.  

What fun to see how everyone interprets each theme. 

Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL - Childhood Border

 Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL #1

 Basket was the theme for the center block and childhood was the theme for the first border. 

Cookies at Christmas is what I chose for my second border.  My husband and I, our kids and our grandkids all have memories centered around Christmas cookie baking so I made up a few Happy Blocks with Christmas cookies in them for my border and then appliqued recipes and "cookies" here and there. 

I traced around the old recipe cards from my husband's mom's recipe card file and wrote those out in ultra fine sharpie on muslin I had soaked in homemade bubble jet set.   I also copied recipes from my mom's old Cooky Book that is falling apart.  I especially remember her snickerdoodles and thumbprint cookies.  The Magic Cookie Bar recipe I cut from a magazine years ago. The reason I included that recipe is because our family has called those cookies Windowsill Hiders (not Magic Cookie bars) for a long time. My oldest son (now 42), when he was around 11, had a bedroom downstairs and everyone else slept upstairs. One morning I woke him up to get ready for school and found a bunch of those Magic Cookie bars hiding behind the curtains on his windowsill. 

I also traced around the cookie cutters to make my applique shapes. The metal ones came from my husband's family and I just had to include Scooby because he's good for all seasons of sugar cookie making.  That was always the favorite cookie cutter of my kids and now of my grandkids.  (Maybe because it makes the biggest cookies?) 

My husband still makes his favorite gumdrop cookies every Christmas but has left the Hard Tack behind. His parents used to make that every year and store it in old cookie tins wrapped in waxed paper.  He and his siblings (all 7 of them) used to call that cookie Heart Attack instead of Hard Tack. 

Gwennie Inspired Medallion #2

Weaving

From the time I was very little I loved crafts. My sisters loved dolls. I loved crafts. If I played with any dolls it was paper dolls - and that is because I would trace around them and make my own paper doll clothes. 

Weaving was one of the crafts I have enjoyed over the years. 

I started out with one of those potholder looms. I made potholders of every design I could think of. Of course those darned things were so small and did not server well as a potholder but I kept on making them for everyone I knew. I was always going to try making them all into a rug but never got to that point.   My loom was made of metal. The looms my daughter (now almost 40) had (and I still have as seen above) were made of hard plastic.  I looked around for my real and very small loom so I could include what I moved on to next but it's probably thrown up in the attic somewhere. I found the instructions for the loom in my old dusty weaving book.  I made belts for everyone with it. I have a pic somewhere of me wearing one but also couldn't find it.  If I remember correctly I used crochet thread to make them.  And finally there's the circular looms that make nice stocking caps that look like they were knitted.  My granddaughters said they wanted to learn to make some so they might be using those next.  (They weren't interested in making any potholders, thank goodness). 

I can tell you that it's not as easy to simulate weaving in quilting as it is to actually weave!

Childhood for the theme was Cynthia's (of Wabi-Sabi Quilts) idea so she's hosting the link up this month.   It will be fun to see how everyone interprets the theme. 

Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL

Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL

There's a Gwennie (Gwen Marston) Inspired Medallion QAL going on in blog land.

  Lori at Humble Quilts is hosting the monthly linky party. 

The first theme from Lori for the center block is BASKET.  Other ladies will decide our themes for the coming months.  It should be fun!

 I prefer making lots of pieced blocks over one appliqued blocks any day so I pieced my blocks and made traditional "cake stand" blocks that I'm calling baskets since I called them baskets in another quilt I made in 2014.   In that quilt I filled most of  my "baskets" with flowers and fruits and some other fun things I had in my stash. 

But there were no baskets of chocolate in that quilt! Gasp!

Well...I love chocolate (and cookies and donuts) so I filled a few baskets with those favorites for my center block.   I decided to leave off two corners until I decide what to do for the second round. I might take off the other two corners, put the missing two back on or who knows what. 

I like big quilts so that's what this will be. I don't have a design wall so took it outside today after I got home from work to hang it on the clothesline. It was way too windy for a photo (boo hoo) so my husband came to my rescue and helped hold it still for a photo.  

THEN...

After I filled up those baskets I remembered I had won some baskets last year from Block Lotto  (or was it the year before?)  Anyway, I haven't used them all in a quilt yet  (I used a few with some woven blocks in a quilt ) so I decided to sew them all together and play along with these as a center also. 

I see the next theme is CHILDHOOD.  Hmmmm...

I'm off to view everyone's basket centers. 

Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL