Fishheads, fishsticks, and shark's fin soup

It's time for the big reveal of the final borders of the Gwennie Inspired Medallions, and I don't remember ever having more fun with a sewing project.  There was a lot of joy, mixed with intermittent angst, and really, isn't that Life in a Nutshell?
We started with 'baskets', then had 'childhood', then 'log cabins', then 'stars'.
September's theme was 'Something's Fishy', which was an interesting challenge.  My first idea looked better inside my head than it did outside.

I was thinking 'fishbones', but this missed the mark somehow.
Back to the drawing board.
Fishbones led me down the path to fishsticks, though, which carried me on to fishheads.
Fishheads...  hmmm...
(I took a whole bunch of pictures of my fishhead process, but unfortunately they're all on an SD card that is currently sticking out of the front of my computer back home.  Sigh.)
I made huge strips of fishheads, then made them even longer when I tried them up against the sides of the quilt and realized I was seriously underestimating how much length I was going to need.
Then I started sewing them on.
Without measuring anything.
This is so Not My Way.
And when I reached the end of the quilt side,

I chopped off the extra.

They said it would get easier.  They were right, though I did still gasp when I chopped this one.

Then the biggest surprise of all - when I got to the fourth corner, sewing on the fourth border, it came out perfectly with NO trimming necessary.

I was a little afraid I'd slipped into an alternate universe...

When I laid it out to look at it, I discovered that sometimes fishheads just aren't enough.

Luckily, I'd already worried about this and had a Plan B tucked away just in case.

Fishsticks!

I'd already started piecing bunches of rectangles, figuring if I'd use them for the smaller medallion if I didn't like them here.
I like them!
So did the official Resident Quilt Inspector.  (That's Samwise.  He's new to his duties as Resident Quilt Inspector, but I thought he did a fine and conscientious job.)

So, I sewed on yards and yards of fishsticks, until the quilt was too big to lay out anywhere in the house...

We clothespinned it to the curtains and I stood across the room.

There's a bit too much light behind it, and it's still too long to not drape on the carpet.

Here it is with a chair in front of it for reference.

Whew!  That was the larger of my two medallions, and it was a relief to finish it.  And a joy, because I love it to bits.

Speaking of bits, I had some left over.  These needed to go into the second medallion.

At first I was going to just do more fishsticks, because seriously?  That big quilt had taken its toll on me.  But if fishheads aren't enough, then obviously fishsticks aren't either.
So I added some shark's fins.

I'm pretty pleased with how this one turned out, too.

 Though I did have a moment's mad thought of doing this:

which would have meant a bias border all around the edges.  Luckily a trusted friend talked me down off that ledge.
It'll make a lovely binding, I think, so I'll settle for that.  (Though if I find a purple bias stripe print, all bets are off.)

Final stats?  
The large medallion finished at 87x93 - definitely bed sized.  It seemed even bigger when I was hanging it up!
The smaller one finished at 46x53.  I think it needs one more dark border (purple bias stripes!) to really be done, but it's still a good sized lap or baby quilt.
Considering I started this QuiltALong figuring I'd end up with a couple of wall hangings, I'm a little surprised how they grew!  

This QuiltALong has been a blast from beginning to end.  I feel like I learned a lot, especially about just relaxing and letting the stitches fall where they may sometimes.  And it's been a pure pleasure seeing how other quilters tackled their own challenges as we explored these themes together.

Many many thanks to the wonderful women whose brainchild this whole thing was, and a special request -

Can we make this an annual event?  Pretty please?!?



Linking with the Big Reveal.  Come see all the gorgeous quilts!

 

Didn't mean to be gone this long...

September has been a busy month!  My dad's birthday is in September, and for the last 30 or so years, he and my stepmom have thrown a Pig Roast for friends and family to celebrate.  Since attendance often runs well into three digits, it takes a lot of prep to pull it off.  And of course, there was the time to be spent with visiting relatives gathering for the big day - my brother and SIL from the Midwest, whom I hadn't seen in years, came up north with a passel of their grandchildren for a too-short vacation.
Added to that, I was trying to move along my Gwennie medallions while simultaneously packing up projects to take along for an extended visit with my daughter and family.  (Oh, and clothes, too.  I did finally remember to pack some clothes.)
So here I am, now, in the quiet of Maryland, finally taking a few deep breaths.
And still moving along my Gwennies.
I even did this -

without having to go lie down afterwards...

Good morning, starshine!

One of the projects I've most enjoyed working on this year is the Gwennie Inspired Medallion Quilt Along.  Each month has been a riot of fun, working with a new theme.
For August, we were given the stars!
Now I love stars.  There are so many kinds of stars blocks to make, and they're all beautiful.
But this made it a little bit hard to narrow down what kind of stars to make for my medallion borders.  How to choose, when I love them all?
I started with the obvious - maverick stars.

This is a form I haven't played with much, and I've always thought they looked like fun.  But they're harder to make than they look, and there's a lot of waste involved.   Since my medallion has gotten quite large, it would have taken a lot of these stars to make a border.
So, I kept playing.
I made other stars.

And still other stars.

And some more.

And more.

And I even remembered that I had some 4" sawtooth stars tucked away for a rainy day, so I pulled them out to play, too.

And there I was again, surrounded by blocks of all different sizes, and unable to choose between them.
You know where this is headed, right?
Yep, just like the sunflowers in the second round.  I decided to use all the kinds.
I started laying them out, and quickly decided that combining the stars with random vaguely-checkerboardish squares would be the best approach.

And I hit a wall around that point, as I mentioned in my last post, so I moved on to my smaller medallion while I waited (in vain, as it turned out) for the fabric fairy to deliver my stop border fabric.

I wanted to show these stars again, because they came about starting with seeing a block that Julie was playing with on her blog, and following her lead to Lynn Harris's Wind Farm from Every Last Piece.  I made a much simpler version, using a long triangle sewn as a flippy corner on a 2.5" pieced square.

There were half a dozen of them in various colors by the time I was done.  I really like the small spiky-ness of them.
I used a variety of stars and 1.5" strips to frame my smaller medallion quilt, and I'm quite happy with it.

This top now measures 36"x44", which is still a manageable size.  We'll see how big it ends up after the next stage.

So, with the smaller medallion done, and the clock ticking down to the end of the month, I went ahead and finished the larger one with the second choice stop border fabric.

Et voila!

I'm happy with my stars, and happy with my quilt-in-progress.  And it's a good thing, too, because it now stands at 64"x70" with a round still to go.  I really hadn't planned on making another bed-sized quilt this summer, but here it is!

And look what arrived in the mail late this afternoon -

The stripe is the one on the left.  It's a lot darker and purpler in real life; as usual I'm not good at getting purples to photograph true to color.  The other stripe is just because I'm trying to collect more stripes, and the jelly roll was their super-duper-daily-special with lots of batiks in purples and blues.  Because I'm a total sucker for batiks.  And purple...


So now I'm done with Phase Four of the QAL, and I'm rarin' to go on the next theme.  I'll be linking with Lori at Humble Quilts when the linky party goes live.  And then I'm going to go enjoy seeing what all the folks have been up to with their own starshine!  You all should come see, too!

Last purple Saturday

It's a good thing that I already have some purple blocks from March, because I sure haven't got much to show for August.
One more piglet joins the party:

but that's the lot.

Most of my month was spent madly piecing stars for my Gwennie Medallions.  Between the fact that I'm making two different quilts for the QAL and that one of them has grown ridiculously large, I needed buckets of blocks to translate my mental pictures into reality.
I tackled the larger of the two quilts first.  As I happily pieced and lopped away, I hunted for a suitable fabric for a stop border between my courthouse steps and my new stars.  About mid-month, I finally found  The One - a purple stripe that was just what my heart wanted.  I ordered it from the online store that had it, got the order-acknowledgement email, and sat back to wait.
And I waited.
And waited.
After a week had passed with no word, I emailed to ask if there was a problem with my order.  I had hoped to have the fabric in hand by that time, but I hadn't even been notified that it had shipped.
And I waited.
The next day I finally got an email saying it had shipped.  The delivery date?  August 31st.
In other words, too late to do me any good for this quilt.
While I'd waited, I'd already finished the smaller Gwennie Medallion.  I'd been holding up on a final joining of the blocks for this larger one, since I didn't know how wide the stop border was going to be.  I didn't want to have to go through the kind of mental gymnastics that would be called for in trying to fill up that empty space between finished borders.
I already knew there was nothing locally that suited me, and it was too late to order from any other online source, so I went stash diving.
I came up with this stripe, which I had bought for a project that I'm sure to get to someday.  You know, someday.  It's an orange and blue stripe, it was on super-clearance, it was screaming my name, and I bought all they had.  I've been hugging it and patting it ever since.
Eventually I'll get to that other project (I think there's still enough of this stripe left), but in the meantime, I cut some strips and pieced them as unobtrusively as possible.

And then I thought "Wouldn't it be cool to miter the corners?" and then I thought "Wouldn't it be cool to just drop a bowling ball on my foot and butt the corners?" and I skipped the part with the bowling ball and just started sewing.

It's not the border of my dreams, but it'll do.

Yeah, it'll do nicely.
Maybe I can use that purple stripe for the next stop border.  If and when it finally arrives...


Linking with So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday, and with Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh, Scrap!  Come see all the fun!

Almost no purple at all...

The end of the week just flat out snuck up on me, and I've got precious little purple to show for this week's Rainbow Scrap Challenge linkup.  On the days I could whip up enough enthusiasm to go out in the heat and head down to the studio, I tended to focus on the projects I'm most trying to move forward.
There were log cabins for Log Cabin Lunacy at JulieK's.

There's a little purple here and there, but not much.

And I was playing with lots of color for another project -

(You can probably guess what project...)  Not much purple turning up there, either.

Even the monkeys weren't flashing much purple, and they're usually happy to oblige with any color I want.  Or don't want.  They're not picky.

My daughter sent me this the other day -

That explains a lot...



Linking with So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday, Oh Scrap at Quilting is More Fun than Housework, and Log Cabin Lunacy at JulieK Quilts.
Come share the fun!

Gwennie Medallions, stage 3

Woohoo!  It's time for the big reveal for July's play with the Gwennie Medallion QAL!  I've been looking forward to this!

Log Cabins was our theme for July - any version or even just the spirit of log cabins.   (This is the best part of the QAL for me - the wide-openness of the theme each month.  Pick up any part and run with it!  Have fun!  Gotta love it.)

I've made a bunch of log cabin quilts over the years - quilt-as-you-go log cabin quilts were my go-to wedding gift for a long time - but I'd only done the standard blocks, so this time I wanted to try something different.
Courthouse Steps was a block that had always appealed to me, but I'd never done anything with it before, so this was a perfect opportunity.  I ran up a bunch of blocks and started to play.

This was looking fairly good, but I kept thinking something is missing...
I know!  What this quilt needs is more orange!

Yeah... that's better...
I applied some border strips log-cabin-fashion, with darks on the right and bottom and lights on the top and left.
I like it!

A couple more strips to make things come out even - "this looks wide enough" - slice off the excess,

and tada!

That works for me!

On to my second medallion - the applique basket.
When I'd first laid out the courthouse blocks, I set the second medallion on it to see if I wanted courthouse blocks for it, too.

Nope.  The poor center was completely overwhelmed.  I needed something different.

Since I'd tried something new with the courthouse steps blocks, I decided to continue in that vein.  I'd never done quarter log cabins, either, so I made a bunch of small ones and resumed my play.

Not what I was looking for.
I tried again with a different setting.

That's better.  Still not quite it, but definitely onto something.
And I ended up with this, and thought I was done.
But then I started to dither.

Is it really done?  I'm happy with it, right?  No?
Turns out it needed one more thing.

More logs!
Now I'm happy with it.

And our next theme is STARS!!  I loooooove stars, so this will be fun.  And maybe hard to stop...

Though I'm starting to get a little worried about the sizes of these two quilts.  I went into this thinking I'd end up with a nice wallhanging or two.
Since I'd measured these centers when I finished them, but then lost the paper I'd written the figures on, this time I'm taking no chances.  Remeasured,  wrote it down, and PHOTOed it, just to make sure.

Getting bigger and bigger, with two themes to go.
Yep, this is going to be fun!

Come one, come all to the fabulous Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL linky party!   Gorgeous stuff waiting!