My Liberated Medallion Quilt is Done!

I just finished sewing the last border on my "Sewing Baskets" quilt--Gwen Marston came up with the idea for the title.

Did anyone guess that I was making selvage spools for my last border?  (Yes, that is a sock monkey on one of the selvages!)

I got two of the borders on at BIQR and then found out I did not have enough spools for the last two borders.

 I had to make more spools this week before I could assemble an attach the last two borders.

Here I am talking about my quilt at Show and Tell at the end of the BIQR retreat.

Please ignore the white thread on the blue border!

My husband held the quilt up for me to take pictures.

This quilt top is full of memories of the things I have made from the fabrics in it (literally hundreds of different selvages!) and my fun week at BIQR 2012!

Here are a few more pictures that I took while I was away...

The dock...

I love the way the clouds are reflected in the still water.

The sun is going down...

And, some fluff, just waiting for a breeze to carry it away.

More pictures of BIQR to follow in future posts.

My Liberated Medallion Part 2

In the previous post, I showed you the beginnings of my liberated medallion quilt that I made at BIQR 2012 last week. I had a good night's sleep and then came up with this idea as I was getting ready in the morning...

I decided to put my daisy on point! I set to work cutting out the green triangles...

The green parts needed something so I added some selvage petals.

At last year's retreat, I made several of these cute little baskets. (You can see the post here) I decided to use them as a border in my quilt but was not sure about adding them right next to the selvage border...

 

I added a narrow fushia border first and then the baskets.

 

It was Gwen's idea to add movement to the quilt by placing the baskets this way instead of putting them on point.

 

I liked this blue fabric as the next border but was not sure about using it in this way--again, I slept on it and in the morning, decided to use a narrow blue border instead.

 

 

At this point, I was not sure what to do next so I made another couple of large pieces of selvage fabric while pondering my options.

 

Then, I the light bulb went on and I set about working on my idea for the final border...

 

 

 

Cutting and sewing and cutting and sewing....

 

 

Can you guess what I made for the final border?

 

 

 

This little monkey, cut from one of my selvages provided encouragement to keep going!



Here is another view of the dock at White Birch Lodge on a misty morning:

BIQR--My Liberated Medallion Project Part 1

I had decided ahead of time that I would bring a bin with my selvages in it to BIQR so that I could make a liberated selvage medallion. I had 1 1/2 plastic drawers of selvages saved up so I dumped them all into a plastic bin and brought them with me along with my collection of solids.

I spent quite a while creating two pieces of selvage fabric--I top stitched the selvages to a light weight muslin.

The final product was these two selvage "scarves" which I am modeling here:

 

I cut this fabric into the shapes I wanted to use for the centre of my quilt using newspaper patterns that I cut out ahead of time to lay them out and make sure they were the right size and shape.

 

I got all the cutting done and the pieces pinned to the orange fabric I had chosen as my background. Then, the power went out. All of Elk Rapids was without power for several hours because, somewhere, a squirrel had decided to hide some nuts in a transformer. The squirrel did not live to tell the tale!  What are a bunch of die-hard quilters to do???? 

 

Pretty soon, carloads of quilters were on their way to the local quilt stores for some retail therapy! We even shopped in one shop by the light of some flashlights provided by the employees at the shop! We all did our part to help the local economy.

 

After supper, the power came back on and we could all get back to our sewing machines. I machine appliqued these pieces to the background.

 

 

I wanted to add a selvage fabric border at some point and spent some time trying out different  options.

Carol wondered if this fabric from her stash would work:



I liked the fabric, just not in this quilt. The green, however, did look good with my orange background....

By this time, it was getting late and I was tired. I decided to head off to bed and get some sleep.

If you want to know what I decided to do, come back to my blog in a day or two and I will show you how my project developed.

Beaver Island Quilt Retreat 2012 Gwen's Quilts

I spent most of the last week at White Birch Lodge in Elk Rapids, Michigan at my second Beaver Island Quilt Retreat with Gwen Marston.  Quilting friends, Carol, Caitie and Christine and I travelled together, stopping at a couple of quilt stores along the way, of course!

When we finally arrived at our destination, we claimed our sewing spots and got settled in for some warm up sewing after supper. I worked on some 9 patches for a swap.

The next morning, Gwen did a lecture/trunk show on this year's theme, "Liberated Medallions". It was two hours of liberated bliss, listening to Gwen discuss the history of medallion quilts and then show us some of the medallion quilts that she has made over the years.

She had a binder filled with pictures of old medallion quilts which have inspired the quilts that she has made.

Gwen had much quilting wisdom to share and many quilts to show! All I could do was just drink it all in.

This one was not quilted yet--broken dishes in two sizes around a center panel. The fabrics are from Holland. This was one of my favourites!

I loved the colours and the wrap-around flying geese on this quilt.

Gwen made this quilt to celebrate the good things in her life at the time it was made--her children, horses, flowers, etc. Sorry I did not get a better picture.

More broken dishes and flying geese.

This quilt had an extra row of on point 16 patches to make in rectangular rather than square like most of the medallion quilts that she showed us.

This liberated sampler is made from several orphan blocks that she had leftover from other projects. I loved this one too!

More amazing applique.

Pierson was Gwen's beloved dog. He was big and fluffy and well loved!

It was neat to see quilts that have been featured in Gwen's books.

A string medallion.

Liberated stars...

and a liberated flying goose!

The pile at the end of the show---enough inspiration to last for years in my quilting life!

Later this week, I will show you my liberated medallion quilt top and how it evolved.

To end this post, here is a picture of the dock at White Birch Lodge reaching out into Elk Lake.

There will probably be more pictures of this dock appearing in later posts. I did a series of pictures at different times of the day and from different perspectives.

Pieced Back is Done...

...and it looks like I have made a modern quilt out of my flannel scraps.  I managed to use up most of my flannel scraps from the top of the quilt. I even pieced my label into the back!

I had to piece my batting!  Everything is ready to take to Cathy tomorrow after work.

I worked on some blue and neutral 9 patches tonight too. There is still a bit more sewing to do on these but they are coming along.

 

Christine was here tonight and she worked on some jelly bean blocks (no pictures) and another Great Granny Square:

 



 She used my Featherweight tonight as her machine was in use by her daughter who is taking some sewing lessons.

 

I have some exciting news...Next week, I will be going to my 2nd Beaver Island Quilt Retreat with Gwen Marston!  I have already been planning in my head which fabrics I will take with me for this year's project--a medallion quilt. There are four of us going on this year's trip.

Here is a picture of Carol, Christine, Gwen and I from last year's retreat.

I can hardly wait!