Whew, that title is a tongue twister! All of which to say is that my local modern quilt guild is hosting a mystery medallion challenge this year, and I’m making mine as a mini quilt. Our Swaps and Challenges coordinator has come up with a list of 7 mystery prompts that she gives out every 4-6 weeks. We then complete at least two borders on our medallion quilts with whatever method and technique we like to interpret the given prompt. It’s been a lot of fun so far!
For my medallion quilt, I decided a few things:
- I would only use Liberty, and solids from The Creative Retreat’s Solids club.
- My medallion quilt would be a mini – I knew I couldn’t commit to a large quilt, but mini? I can do that.
- It would be improv. GASP! My MQG is full of improv quilters, so this was the time to challenge myself. No rulers allowed except at the end of each round to create a straight edge for the following borders. No squaring up, eek!
- The final “rule” was decided a little later on, as I started my quilt, but I would do two borders each round – one lighter and one darker, on opposite sides of the quilt. It also emerged that it would become a rainbow quilt!
The first prompt provided for our medallion centres was nature. Each prompt includes a mood board of inspirational images to get our creative juices flowing, and I was taken by a photo of succulents, with the leaves (petals?) rippling out from the centre. I had two ideas I had to try out, so I went with an improv block, and improv log cabin blocks.
The second prompt was linear. Creating stripes seemed like a great next step from log cabins, and this round did challenge the straight-and-square-lovin’ quilter within. And by now, I was realising that improv with some self-set guidelines is quite quick! I can easily whip out a border in under half an hour. Awesome!
Next up was signs. The inspirational moodboard was full of road signs, and I pounced on the triangular signs. Although improv is a little bit of a challenge for me, I do love that I can keep to my love of geometric lines and shapes. This is also the round where my rainbow palette plan is starting to become visible…
The last round was negative space/contrast. Now, this prompt threw me a little. I wasn’t sure how to interpret this for my quilt, and it took until the very last day of the round for me to settle on using just four pieces of fabric for each border. Strip-pieced, sliced in half, and rotated to create the rectangular four-patch. Not as busy as the first few rounds, which is a contrast. And there’s more “negative space” in the way of the “background solids”.
That photo also shows just how not square this quilt top is. I’m unsure if I will even square it up at the end! Maybe that’s the statement/perfect end to this challenge for me. We shall see.
Now we’re up to round 5, and the prompt is right way up, rotate, flip, repeat. Not gonna lie, this has also thrown me a little, as my first thought would be triangles rotating around! But I’ve already done triangles… I’m going to have to mull this one over a bit. But if you have any ideas, feel free to throw them at me!
Leave a Reply