Sunday, April 12, 2020
Welcome to the Central Oregon Quilt-Along! I designed this scrappy medallion quilt as a thank you gift to all of our wonderful quilters and sewists. Many of you have jumped in to sew masks (and masks and more masks!), but if you would like a break, here is a little treat for you. Please feel free to share with friends outside Central Oregon -- the more the merrier!
I asked each of the members of the BJ's Inspiration team for the name of one of their favorite blocks, and then designed a medallion quilt using all of them (and a few more that I like!). The quilt measures 68" x 68" and can easily be made larger with an extra border. There is no applique in this quilt, but a couple of the blocks are foundation pieced. I will post a how-to video when we get to those blocks; if you absolutely detest paper-piecing, find similar blocks that you do like.
I call this quilt "Friendship's Rainbow" because I am doing it in a rainbow of bright batiks. If rainbow brights aren't your thing, this design would look great in any scrappy palette.
You will need 1 1/4 yards of your feature fabric (mine is the multi-colored bubbles on black) and 2 1/2 yards of your background (I am using a soft green batik), and lots of scraps. Most blocks can be made with fat eighths of 2-3 different fabrics.
For your background, you want to make sure there is enough contrast between your scraps and the background:
That funny yellow-green is my lightest scrap, and I think it will work fine.
The feature fabric is a constant, showing up somewhere in each of the blocks. There are a few small pieces in this quilt, and I want to make sure my constant reads consistently throughout the quilt. I made a little (1") viewfinder to test some fabrics:
No matter where I place it, the fabric will read black with little pops of color. Click here for a link to this one in our shop.
This one could work, too:
If you don't care for black, any of these could work was well:
This print from Tula's new line could be fun, too:
This is the quilt layout with my background in place (it will appear in some of the blocks, too). When I give you a new clue to the mystery, I will show you where the blocks will go. I think this will be fun!
