Winter Medallion Quilt

You could be forgiven for thinking that not only have I not been here much on my blog in 2018 but that I’ve also not been in my studio much.  And it’s true that my studio time has taken a hit, what with the big time commitments I’ve taken on in the form of putting together the Fibre Arts Network newsletter each month and in piloting the good ship Greenwood Public Library as board chair.  But I’ve had SOME time out there, and as a result do have things to show you.  Some of these things I could have shown you months ago, but whether because of poor photography conditions or lack of time for blogging I haven’t.  So I’m going to start making up for that now.

My favourite project from this past winter is this one, which I’m calling Winter Medallion.  If you frequent this space regularly, you might remember the Spring Medallion quilt top that I finished last spring.  Have a look here to read about how I created that top (and the back, which is pieced).  I regret to say that the top and back are still two separate items:  I haven’t gotten around to quilting that one yet.  But in the meantime, the medallion bug infected me again.  I started another one back in the late fall, and I’m calling it “Winter Medallion."

This one had two different starting places.  The first was another bag of scraps, all trimmed-off triangles about and inch and a half on the long sides, given to me by my library raffle quilt compatriot Lynne.  From the first bag she gave me, which contained triangles in mostly whites and creams and beiges, I made my Wonky Stars quilt (it's the one up there at the top of the page in the banner photograph).  From the second one, mostly greens, I created this Aspen Leaf collage.  Even the borders are made with overlapping triangles that wrap from front to back.  

And then there's this one, Stripes and Stars, that began with a lot of triangles that were offcuts in polka dot prints from another of Lynne's quilts.

For this fourth one, I went back to wonky stars.  The prints in Lynne’s triangles were mostly soft pastels that were, or read as, feed sack prints.  I could have put them with white, but I thought that combination a little too traditional for me.  Instead, I decided to pair those pastels with rich reds.  All through the fall I’d make another few star blocks from time to time, enjoying mixing up the red backgrounds and the pastel prints as I went.  I found quite a few yellow triangles in the bag from Lynne and started to include a few of those in every block:  I found they really made the star sparkle.  

But I had no idea what I was going to do with these blocks.  Clumped together in a grid, they didn’t do much.  They just sat there, undistinguished and unenhanced by proximity to one another.  

Then I decided to dive into some blocks I’ve admired for a while in Sujata Shah’s great book “Cultural Fusion.”  I’ve had this book for a few years and I love it.  She’s a fan of improvisational, ruler-free piecing (yay!) and scrap quilts (double yay!) and has a great way with one-block quilts that deliver big-time on attractiveness and impact.  The particular block I wanted to try is called "Crossroads," and of course it turned out to be probably the most difficult block in the book to make.  I chose a palette of greens and reds, not because I wanted to make a Christmas quilt (I will probably never make a Christmas quilt) but because I was in love with red at the time and nothing makes red spark more than green, its complement.  I threw in some pinks and burgundies and rusts and even some oranges to really stretch my definition of “red,” but kept to a pretty narrow spectrum of medium and light acid greens.  Though I did wander off into the cooler yellows as well.  I concentrated on high contrast combinations of colours, values, and print scales to make the “arms” of these units stand out.  These four-pointed stars were the second starting place for this quilt.

And why are these units so difficult to make, you ask?  It’s all about those curved edges and trying to make the centre “rectangles” more or less line up with the seams in the arms.  I made one unit with 1/4 inch seams and realized that I’d have to go down to 1/8 inch seams if I wanted to be able to allow the curves to flow as I wanted them to.   And you know how cross-cutting and resewing a block eats up fabric?  Multiply that phenomenon by at least two with these curves.  I started with 6 inch squares of fabrics layered in threes and ended up with block that measure just over 4 inches.  This was wonky on steroids.

So there I was, with two completely different styles of blocks to work with, and palettes that were related but by no means the same.  I knew I wanted this quilt to be a medallion, as I’ve said, but where would these units go?

I knew I wanted some of the four-armed stars in the centre.  But I played around with the idea of an asymmetrical grid of these stars on a darkish print background.  And I also played with the idea of putting both kinds of blocks in a wide border around that centre.  AND in the photo above you can see the relationship between the palette of fabrics in the four-pointed stars and the strip-pieced segments on either side of the dark-bordered wonky stars on the right.  To be honest, many of my fabric choices for the four-pointed stars came from my determination to include, and thus to match, the fabrics in those strip-pieced units.  You may perhaps recognize them as leftovers that I made and then rejected while working on Spring Medallion.  (See the part in the blog post where I nearly took a wrong turn.)

I love this stage in planning a quilt.  I’m trying to be as out there as I can in my ideas.  I threw in odd blocks that have never found a home.  I played with the notion of reversing the pastel/red placement of fabrics in the wonky stars.  I brought in strongly-patterned prints to audition as backgrounds.  I tried to rise myself out of my tendency toward tight symmetry.  None of these ideas made it into the final quilt, but they sure helped me decide how to proceed.  And who knows where these ideas may pop up in the future?

I continued to play (no, those solids were never on the table for this quilt:  they were another idea entirely that I was musing on at the same time).  I made more and more of both kinds of blocks.

Things got pretty wild, here, with my loosey-goosey ideas about the units in borders changing in midstream.  I loved the possibilities here but didn’t feel comfortable departing quite so far from symmetry.  

With two different styles of blocks in this quilt, it seemed to me that keeping the parts separated might be a better idea.  I simplified.  

This was better, but it was now too simple.  I fussed and thought and moved things around.

Finally, I got to the point where it was time to commit to a beginning and start sewing something together.  Playing wasn’t getting me any further ahead.  In the end, I began by sewing together the square grid of the four-armed stars you see in the photo above.  Twenty-five stars arranged in a five-by-five grid.  Fine. They were so strong, those twenty-five all together, that they needed to be reined in by a strong but retiring border.  I took the idea of the narrow dark burgundy border that I’d tried out on either side of the wonky stars above and ran with it here.  I wish I’d taken a photo at that point to spin out the suspense, but I didn’t:  I just kept building.

Above you can see that the border around that centre grid is REALLY strong.  At this stage it seemed too strong.  But the thing about a medallion quilt is that any bit that doesn’t seem to be working can usually be saved if it’s repeated in a later round of borders.  So I didn’t panic at this stage.  I just kept going.

After that dark border, I wanted to bring in a strong red element as a transition to the red wonky stars.  Funnily enough, that red element started here.

My friend and former colleague Alexa gave me these half-square triangle blocks as part of a bundle of unfinished quilt bits she’d started and knew she’d never finish.  I looked at those gorgeous acid greens and realized that were I to make an equal number of half-square triangle blocks in a similar green paired with red, I’d probably have the makings of wonderful 1/4 square triangle blocks.  And I was right.

I just love how these 1/4 square triangles came out, how the red bleeds out from the dark burgundy border, how they vibrate together and add a new element just as strong as the central grid, and how they fade out in value from the reds, through the greens, and into the whites, creating the perfect foil for the next element to be added:  the red wonky stars.

I confess it was pure dumb luck that the wonky stars fitted together so well with the medallion’s dimensions at this point.  I did a little resewing, narrowing some seams here, widening others there, until the star borders fit perfectly, but I didn’t have to do much to make it work.  Amazing.  It was a pleasure to sew them in place.  Here I’m getting ready to pin the last one in place, working on my cutting table.

In the top left of the photo above, you can see that I’m beginning to plan the next three borders, starting with those strip-pieced pastel units left over from Spring Medallion that I’ve arranged along the top edge.  But you know what?  Something about them bothered me.  Was it that they were too much pastel on top of the pastels in the wonky stars?  Was it too much variety of prints on top of all the variety I already had?  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but my discomfort prompted me to start auditioning prints instead.  Hence the pale yellow leafy number on the left side.

It wasn’t right.  I tried others.

Urp.  Way too yellow.  And way too traditional and precious for this quilt.

That green batik is better.  But it’s really green.  

Hmm.  This is a very cool print, modern and abstract, a great balance of white and green.  But I didn’t have much of it.  Could I cut it carefully enough to eke out a border?  Would it work?  If I messed up even one cut I wouldn’t have enough to make this next border.  Oh the pressure!

I cut.  I auditioned.  I thought it was pretty good.  I pinned it on.

It was perfect.  Absolutely exactly the right mix of white and green, the right width, the right echo of the 1/4 square triangles on the inner side of the wonky stars.  I was thrilled.

And I pushed on.

I’d always intended to have a lot of the four-armed stars in this quilt and as I worked toward this point I had it in mind to splash a whole lot of them into a wide outer border.  So I marched ahead confidently, throwing up dozens of them around the already-sewn centre of the medallion.

Oh dear.  Can you see what’s happening?  That double row of four-armed stars has totally taken over.  My beautiful centre is getting lost.  There’s too much going on.  This is turning into a migraine of a design:  too much, too busy, too many competing elements.

Time to rethink.  I removed one of the two rows.  The sun came out and illuminated the quilt in such a way as to suggest that I was on the right track:  the centre had become central again.  (Cue angel choir.)

 

As you can see, I’m still thinking.  That red print on the right?  It might have worked.  I tried a different one.

Nope, too orange.

But I knew that that second dark burgundy stripe outside the green and white print was right.  It could stay.  It had to stay because it was the only chance I had to repeat that very strong design feature in the centre of the quilt.  If I didn’t repeat it, it would take over.  The idea of the four-armed star border began to shrink, and more red prints turned up.

 

I took down all of the four-armed stars.  But I’d spent so much time making them!  I could hardly bear to let them go!  Still, the quilt needs what the quilt needs; it’s not about how much I’ve worked on an element that turns out not to belong.  Solid red?  Ginkgos?

Ginkgos.  Absolutely the ginkgos.

See what happened when I had cut and sewn on borders of the red ginkgo?  The sun did it again.  Gave me that solar seal of approval.

Hilariously, the only reason I had this beautiful fabric was that I’d bought it to make my mother’s Christmas aprons.  I had enough left over (just) to create a border that’s exactly the right width.  And to my great joy, the dark parts of the ginkgo print provided just enough echo of that deep burgundy border to bridge the gap to my very last border and tie the whole design together.

My dear husband and I debated the last step for quite a while.  He felt that the quilt was finished with the ginkgo border.  I felt that without a repeat, the heavy burgundy border around the centre grid was too heavy and didn’t fit. 

 I auditioned the border.  He agreed.  I sewed it on.

The sun came out again.  It’s done.

I LOVE IT.  I took it along with me to a regular sewing session of the Greenwood Library raffle quilt makers and unveiled it during our break.  They loved it too.  Lynne paid me the ultimate compliment:  “It gives me shivers,” she said.  Perfect.  And it all started with a ziplock bag of leftover triangles that she gave me.

Comments

[Myrna Charlton]

It's a masterpiece, Anne. Congratulations! I also love the red and green combination.

[Anne at Shintangle Studio]

Thank you, Myrna! Wow, a "masterpiece." That's a wonderful compliment.

[Anne's sister]

Stunning! Great work, Sis.

[Anne at Shintangle Studio]

Thanks, dearie! I appreciate the sisterly vote of confidence.