Medallions and Metallics

My guild now has upwards of 184 members, and even though I'm really busy running the guild, this year I'm making an effort to do more of my own sewing (helps keep my sanity!). Last year as VP I think I missed doing a lot of the challenges and other sewing projects due to administrative duties. Here's a little bit of what I've been working on.

We're doing a Medallion Along this year instead of a Block of the Month, and each month we officers present a new round. This month was my month to work on it, so I had to sew my own as well as the guild one we are sewing together. This is the guild quilt, made of Botanics fabric by Carolyn Friedlander, donated by Robert Kaufman. This one we will raffle off to our members at the end of the year.

I'm going to post an update about my personal medallion quilt but decided to make it into its own post. It looks like I posted the center medallion awhile back and that is all so far!

Our guild also has a couple of quilt shows coming up for Quilt Knit Stitch! this summer. I used a fun method that is going around, we used it last month for the Faith circle of do.Good stitches. I offset the second row though for visual interest since it's so small. I don't think I have a finished one of my Michael Miller Glitz mini quilt (entitled Metallic Criss Cross) that will be in our PMQG exhibit, but here it is after quilting but before binding.

And the only pic I have of the back when I was hand sewing the binding (95% of my quilts I machine stitch the binding completely, so it was a rare moment!)

There is also a larger exhibit for Pacific Northwest Metallic quilts that lots of Modern Quilt Guilds in the area were invited to show in. I entered my quilt below, Metallic Offset Arrows, for the exhibit but didn't make it in. Robert Kaufman Metallic Linen, Metallic Burlap, and Metallic Tussah. Also some RK Carolyn Friedlander Botanics (the orange) and an RK Kona solid. I used gold metallic thread to hand quilt it, and randomly found some RK backing fabric in my stash that perfectly matched! I used a flange method of binding for that little pop of color around the front edges.

Sorry, this was a late night shot when I found this fabric for the back in my stash at 2 am!

Aiming for Accuracy Quilt Christmas Present

I joined the Aiming for Accuracy Quilt Along earlier this year and was working on two sets of blocks. One was this colorway of purple, aqua/turquoise, yellow, pink, and gray with a medium gray sashing. I didn't really have plans for either one, but was having fun working on them. I got behind in the QAL at the end of the summer though. A month or two ago I decided that this one would be a nice Christmas present for my boyfriend's parents, so I started working on it!

I had some problems with the borders and ended up just doing a single border. Also, the quilt is upside down in all the pics. D'oh! Not that it matters that much, but since I was following a pattern I've been used to seeing it the other way!

Front:

Back:

Close-up of Crossword puzzle fabric on the back and quilting:

The quilt is about 52" x 77" which is a little bit bigger than I care to quilt on my machine at home, so I quilted it on the quilting frame at a local shop. It was my second time quilting a quilt on the frame and my first time doing so by myself (my friend who teaches there was alongside me last time!) My boyfriend paid for my time on the frame, and the batting) so the quilt was from both of us.

A couple close-ups of the blocks:

This was my first time using a flange binding and although it was more work than my regular binding, I do like the little pop of color. You make it by stitching two strips of fabric together lengthwise for the binding, the part you want to be the flange should be wider than the other strip by about 1/4-1/2 inch. After folding in half to make the binding the flange side will pop out just a tiny bit! It's machine sewn to the back of the quilt and folded to the front and machine sewed down just like my regular binding method.

The quilt was a big hit and his mom cried a little bit when she opened it!

I still have another one in bright pink, bright blue, black, lime green, orange and white. Not sure when I'll finish it but I think that one will be for me.