20th Anniversary Challenge for the Elgin Piecemakers

 I belong to a small quilt guild--the Elgin Piecemakers--that recently celebrated 20 years of getting together to share our love of all things quilting.  We have 20 members and we meet in each others homes. There is always a wonderful social/snack time at every meeting.  In late 2019, we decided that we should celebrate our 20 years as a guild in a significant way.  Someone proposed an anniversary quilt challenge--we would each make our own centre block and then each month for several months, we would be given instructions on what to add to the centre block to make a medallion quilt. Somewhere in our quilt, we had to add something to indicate 20--and I chose to make my centre block XX--20 in Roman numerals. 

I chose to use fabric I had in my stash.  I found a half yard of yellow paperweight Kaffe Fassett fabric and a fat quarter of the same fabric in green. The background is leftover from another project and I had about a yard of it. Then, I got out my green and yellow Kona solid scraps and added those to the mix. I also made the decision to make my blocks in a liberated fashion, like I had learned at the Beaver Island Quilt retreats with Gwen Marston several years ago. 

For the first border, we were told to add stars. I made 4 liberated/wonky stars and decided to just add them to two sides of the centre block. 

Next up was appliqué borders on two sides of the quilt.  I cut some of each of the two Kaffe fabrics on the bias and hand appliquéd them to the background fabric. 

For paper piecing, I made some string borders using various widths of my scraps and Kaffe fabrics.  You can see the string borders above. 

Curved piecing was the next prompt.  I stacked a solid with a Kaffe fabric and sliced through them on a curve before sewing them together again to make my units. 

The second to last border was to be made with HST's. By this time, I was running short of the background fabric so I figured this might be my last border.  I made some string pieced squares and cut them in half on the diagonal to make my HST's. 

The final border could be whatever we wanted it to be.  I chose to use the binding as my final border.  I had just enough of the yellow paperweight fabric to bind my quilt. 

I found a piece of bright green solid which I used for the backing.  I quilted my quilt on my domestic sewing machine with my walking foot using yellow thread. 

My husband took a picture of me with my completed quilt out in our backyard earlier this week. 

This was a great challenge for the members of our guild.  

I wonder what we will do for our next challenge.  I will just have to wait and see.  I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge crew on Saturday since this month's colour was yellow.