Mystery Medallion - the big reveal!

The Mystery Medallion quilt was finished up last week but I only had a chance to get out today to take proper pics of it.

Ta Da!

I am so pleased to have made my very own medallion quilt and that a design which only took shape as I went along has worked out so well.  (The journey of the medallion is in the Mystery Medallion Quilt tab above, along with the "how to" details if you are interested.)

Those of you following my progress with this quilt will know that I had some dramas quilting her.  I'm pleased to say that those hours of unpicking my first two attempts were not in vain, even though they were very painful.  Thank you to those of you who cheered loud encouragement from the sidelines of the blog and IG as I crossed that slough of despond! The awful distortion has been rectified, although the quilting is now much more discrete than I had intended with some simple echoing in places and stitch in the ditch (-ish) in most others.

Being brutally honest, I was more than a little disappointed that the quilting is now just so ordinary.  It took a while for me to adjust the vision I had of the quilting on this quilt being a real feature but I think now I am accepting that the medallion design is the feature in itself (esp given my limited quilting capabilities).

So, one last pic before I consign this Mystery Medallion journey to my quilting history annals.  I am looking forward to using this quilt a lot!

Oh, and I forgot to add this is also a finish from my FAL Quarter 2 list.

Mystery Medallion Quilt - Border 6

Well folks, my 300 2.5" squares are all stitched up now and here's what they look like on my Mystery Medallion Quilt.

It took a little longer than I thought to piece all those little squares together but it was worth it.

I wanted something special for the cornerstones of this border because this is the final border of the quilt - yay!  I decided on Le Moyne stars and a little bit of paper piecing later I had these four to finish off my quilt.

So, there you have it.  The full Mystery of the Mystery Medallion has revealed itself coming to life from my head into fabric reality.

My verdict:  I have LOVED every minute of thinking this quilt through, calculating the measurements, watching the borders grow and trying to think what would look good next when I didn't plan anything ahead of time.  My one uncertainty about the quilt top is actually about those final cornerstones and whether perhaps I should have made them in a white background instead of the red, but I'm not going to think about it too much.

So, as with all the other details for this quilt

Here's what I did

Border 6 - bringing finished size up to 62.5" square
Make 4 sets of checkerboard borders - each one is 3 rows of 25 2.5" squares
Make 4 Le Moyne Star blocks for the cornerstones - each block 6.5" unfinished

For the checkerboard borders:
Cut 148:  2.5" squares white fabric
Cut 152:  2.5" squares red prints

Layout squares in desired pattern and stitch to form 4 border units of 3 rows x 25 squares each.

For the Le Moyne Star blocks:
Make 4 blocks.  Download and print templates for paper pieced Le Moyne Star blocks (6.5" unfinished blocks) - http://cre8tivequilter.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/block-of-week-block-36-lemoyne-star.html  Take care to check the patterns are the correct size when printed.  You may need to turn off your scaling or adjust it to 100% to get it to print exactly.

Add a Le Moyne Star block to each end of the top and bottom borders.  Stitch the side checkerboard borders on first and then finish by adding the top and bottom borders to your quilt top.


If you fancy having a go at this Medallion Quilt design yourself, all of the how tos have been collated for you on the Mystery Medallion Quilt tab at the top of the page.  If you ever do make up a quilt to this design, I hope you will come back and share a link to your quilt pics for me to see.

Now, obviously while piecing the top is complete this quilt has a way to go before I can call her a finish proper.  I am still trying to decide if I want to spiral quilt this one, so think I will mull it over for a bit.  In the meantime I shall enjoy the fact that I have finally made a quilt from the red and whites I collected and I have my own medallion quilt too!

Mystery Medallion Quilt - Border 5

I spent a little time on Sunday planning the next steps with my Mystery Medallion Quilt and since planning isn't as exciting as actually sewing, I couldn't resist the temptation to go ahead and add the fifth border.

It's another plain border with cornerstones and although I hadn't necessarily set out to add another such border it does feel right to me to somehow separate the various patterned borders from each other.  I was a little afraid that it would be too boring to do this, but I think that by varying the plain border widths and the values of the fabrics used in each that it doesn't feel too rigid or restrictive.  Well, that's what I'm thinking anyway.

Of course, as well as being a variation to the scale of previous plain borders, this skinny one has been specifically sized to accommodate my plans for border 6, which include 300 2.5" squares.  See, I've been cutting already ...

These will form most of the borders but I'm still trying to decide what to add at the corners.  Maybe a wee star?

Anyway, while I decide, if you are interested in catching up on border 5

Here's what I did

Border 5 - bringing unfinished size up to 50.5" square
Single border with contrasting cornerstones.
Cut 4:  1.5" squares for cornerstones
Cut 4:  1.5" x 48.5" for border strips  (using 5 strips 1.5" x FWOF pieced together should give you enough to cut the four required lengths from)

As ever, you can find all the how tos and blog post links in one place on the Mystery Medallion Quilt Tab at the top of the page - and please let me know if you ever try out this medallion quilt, I'd love to see some other examples.

Mystery Medallion - Border 4

I have been longer than I had anticipated getting back to the Mystery Medallion but here it is as she looks now with border 4 attached.

When I left her last she measured 36.5" square and was looking cute for a baby quilt or wallhanging.  However I knew that I wanted to go bigger.  How much bigger?  Even I don't know yet.  Remember this is the quilt I have not planned in any shape or form other than being a medallion.  But, as a start I felt this border needed to be bigger than the previous ones, so I opted to go 6" wide (finished measurement) this time.

Again the maths would allow for a number of different options if you were working to these measurements but perhaps don't want to use the blocks I've chosen.  For example, working 28 6" (finished) blocks would work perfectly here.

However, I chose to work up some paper pieced tippecanoe blocks and intersperse them with simple bordered rectangles and I am so pleased that it turned out just the way I imagined it in my head!

If you'd like to know,

Here's what I did

Border 4 - bringing unfinished size up to 48.5" square
Make 16 paper pieced 6" (finished) tippecanoe blocks
Make 16 bordered rectangle blocks (block will measure 4.5" x 6.5" unfinished)


For the tippecanoe blocks:
Make 16:  I searched online for a tippecanoe paper piecing template that would give me a 6" block, but I couldn't find one, so I had to draw my own.  It wasn't as bad as it sounds though because I found that papersnake.com has a free downloadable quarter inch grid paper.  This made drafting the quadrants of the tippecanoe very simple, but if you give it a go, just check that the paper prints to exactly quarter inch grids before steaming ahead and stitching up blocks.  Pic below shows how to draw the quadrant with a quarter inch seam allowance if you feel like having a go:

Draw a square 12 x 12 squares on the paper.  This is your 3" block (check the measurement, don't proceed if it's not 3").  The little triangle area marked 1 on the photo is marked across the corner 6 squares along on each of the two adjacent sides.  Drawing lines from these points of the triangle down to the bottom corner of the whole square will give you the sections for 3 and 4 also.  Finally, draw a border of 1 square width all the way around your 3" square and this will give you a quarter inch seam allowance all the way round.  Your entire drawing should now measure 3.5" square.  Hope that made sense.

If you squeeze 4 quadrant patterns on to one page of the papersnake quarter inch grid paper you will be able to photocopy it 16 times to yield the template for your 16 blocks.  To do this you need to draw all the way to the edge of the printed grids as you can see above.  The bottom drawings fit within the gridded paper except for the bottom quarter inch seam, but that's easy enough to draw on manually measuring with a ruler.  Getting four on one page really helps with the photocopying.  I would happily send you a pdf of my template page if you are interested, but I have noted that when I reprint the pdf the sizing seems to reduce so that's not much help. It needs to be exact to work.  Any techie individual know why scanning the template would reduce its sizing like this?

For the bordered rectangles:
Cut 16:  2" x 2.5" rectangles for centres
Cut 32:  2" x 2.5" rectangles for borders
Cut 32:  2" x 6.5" rectangles for borders

Position a tippecanoe block at each corner and alternate 4 bordered rectangle blocks with a further three tippecanoes along each side.


So, now that border 4 is all stitched up I really will have to get my thinking cap on for what comes next.

Don't forget all the "how to's" for this medallion quilt can be found at the top of my blog on the Mystery Medallion Quilt tab.

Getting ready

Last night was all about prepping this little lot -

so that I can make 16 of those 6" tippecanoe blocks that you can see on the mat.  Tippecanoe - oh how I love that word!  I find myself randomly repeating it today like some kind of crazy woman, but it just makes me smile.

I'm just about still smiling at the thought of another 60(!) of those wee paper pieced quadrants but still they do come together nicely. Besides, it's been ages since I had some paper piecing fun and my Mystery Medallion Quilt is long overdue some attention having been abandoned rather discourteously so that I could fulfil January's commitments.  The tippecanoes are just part of border number 4.  They will be interspersed with an easy peasy spacing block.  I shall be back with the low down once I get these babies whipped together.  (Do you like how I made it sound like it will take me ten minutes rather than ten hours?)

Just so you know, the fabric has been cut approximately to the sizes required to help me minimise the waste on these pp blocks.  I don't normally work paper piecing this way but I did discover with these in the trial run that some simple cuts can help save wastage of my precious white-with-red prints for future borders.

Don't forget my notes on the Mystery Medallion so far can be found on the tab at the top of the page.

Sloping off now to finish a quilt binding (hopefully).