Midnight at the Oasis Quilt

Not long after the needles started to cool from making the Marcelle Medallion quilt from the Liberty Love book, I received in the mail my copy of issue 96 of Quiltmania.  After my friend Danielle posted a picture of her copy of the magazine with the Midnight at the Oasis quilt by Jen Kingwell inside, I knew I would have to have another go at making a Medallion quilt.  Midnight at the Oasis looks even more challenging than Marcelle in that it requires hand applique in some of the borders, which other than appliqueing some circles on my Steam Punk quilt, I have not done before.  It is another "adventure" for me!  With some help from Danielle and a local friend I managed to work out a technique to make the Orange Peels using freezer paper and a glue stick!  It worked, but don't look too closely!  There is plenty of room for improvement with my technique, but I'm going to go easy on myself starting out as I'm sure I'll improve with practice.  Next border is all applique, so I'm looking forward to that!  

If you would like to quilt along with me, please do!  I'm using #midnightoasisqal if you want to find it on Instagram. You can also purchase the pattern from Amitie Textiles here, if you don't want to hunt down the magazine issue.

Life is an Adventure

It's AusMod Bee time!  Actually, I'm just catching up with August's block for the lovely Cat, who asked each member in our bee to create a word for her quilt.  She let us decide the word we wanted, so I chose "adventure" simply because that is how I believe we should approach life.  Have a sense of adventure, don't take yourself too seriously and try to have fun!  Hope everyone is having an adventurous weekend!

Marcelle Medallion Finish

Once in a while I get obsessed with a quilt in that I have to finish it right away.  Some quilts stay in the making stage for years and it has nothing to do with not feeling the love for them, it is usually a completely random thing which ones get finished and which ones don't. 

My Marcelle Medallion quilt made from the Liberty Love book by Alexia Abegg is now finished!  Yesterday I decided that it has been a long time since I've quilted a quilt for myself so I hogged the machine with my Marcelle and decided to spend my day free motion quilting it.  I'm still new to the whole free motion quilting thing, which is why I really only want to do it with my own quilts.  I was kind of happy that the piecing on this quilt was not perfect as it gave me the freedom not to worry whether or not the quilting was perfect.  I just went for it and needled the whole quilt quite heavily.  My intention is to hang this quilt on our bedroom wall anyway, so heavy quilting will work just fine for the purpose.  I even finished hand sewing down the binding while yabbering with my sister-in-law on the phone for three hours! 

 Ok, now I can do something else for a while -- like the dishes, laundry or something similarly exciting. 

Marcelle Medallion--More Borders Added

It's getting harder and harder to photograph a flat shot of my Marcelle Medallion quilt as it is growing!  I just have the crosses and outer border left to do now.  I had planned to write a mini tutorial on an alternative way to do the Flying Geese triangles, but to tell you the truth, I didn't like my method.  Lol, I think I could stand as an example in the Quilt Along of what not to do!  Don't foundation piece the Flying Geese triangles, but do foundation piece the center star.

Make sure if you haven't already checked out the Marcelle Medallion Quilt Along that you have a look!  There are lots of really awesome Marcelle Medallion quilts being built at the moment!

100 Steam Punk Blocks

I thought I would update you with the progress on my Steam Punk quilt lest you think I'm ignoring it.  Last week I finished the last of the 100 blocks.  Whew!  Of course this is not how they will be laid out.  They will be set on point with 16 of these blocks to be chopped up as side settings.  My plan is to use Essex Yarn Dye in black as the sashing color, which will read as a dark grey.  The finished quilt size should be approximately 95 inches square.  I'm glad I soldiered on with these blocks as the larger size will suit our bed. 

Because I love making mosaics, I thought I would make four smaller mosaics so that you can see all the blocks a little closer up.

Marcelle Medallion Quilt Along

Lately I've been seeing a lot of pictures on Flickr and Instagram of the Marcelle Medallion quilt by Alexia Marcelle Abegg, from her book Liberty Love.  Not wanting to be left out, I decided I needed to buy the book and posted a photo on Instagram of my acquisition.  Penny, who has already made this quilt previously, decided that we need to do a quilt along for it.   She put together a great schedule that includes tutorials as well as some generous prizes! 

I finally started it this weekend as I struggle keeping to schedules.  I also decided to jump ahead so that I can write a tutorial for you for an alternative way to make the Flying Geese triangles.  Stay tuned for that!

I tried a new to me method for making the star center in that I used freezer paper to make the templates and sewed the pieces together in pairs, but to be honest, I wasn't impressed with my work.  The method was precise than I would have liked, which I found irritating.  There were just too many variables that made the measurements get out of whack.  That, together with dealing with biases and y-seams made it less enjoyable.  If I decide to make another one, I will try Penny's tutorial on foundation piecing that you can find here.

For my color choices, I decided to use the first border print as an inspiration for the quilt.  I've had that fabric sitting in my stash for ages and have never quite had the right project for it.  Since it is a favorite fabric, I decided to chose my fabrics with that fabric as a loose guide.  I haven't chosen all the fabrics yet, I'm working it out as I go along.  This will be a real experiment for me as I've never yet made a Medallion quilt!  So, let's all Marcelle Medallion Along!  #mmqal