I’ve finally finished the quilting on my “Basket of Flowers” quilt. The binding is done too, and it’s hanging in the family room.
The center portion of this quilt was designed by Rebecca Hoffmann, a member of a yahoo Primitive and Folk Art applique group that I belong to. Some of us did this as a group project quilt along. I’m using this as a Christmas quilt, because the branch with the bird and pears remind of that verse from the well known carol..”and a Partridge in a pear tree..” (sung just a little off key..) 
I wanted the quilt to be a bit larger, so I added several borders. The borders I selected are from another project..a Medallion Quilt Along posted by Anita (RhubarbPatch). This also gave me the opportunity to try out the quilting designs I thought I might use when I quilt the larger top.
The Large Medallion Top…..
Anita saw an antique quilt and wanted to recreate it. She drew it up in her EQ program. It looked like so much fun she decided to invite others to join her and do it up as a quilt along. She posted a new round each month, along with the instructions and step by step pics, to her blog.
This is my version. Several of us did this quilt, with each of us choosing our own center design. Anita set up a photo pool and it was fun to see how the different fabrics used made the quilt look so different. Some of our group stopped before doing the entire quilt. That’s the fun of a medallion styled quilt. You can stop whenever you want..and you have a completed top that looks great. My version measures 90″x90″.
When I pieced my version I did the piecing like was done in the past. When the quilter ran out of a fabric she substituted with something similar. I wanted that vintage look.
As you can see in this pic I used quite a few different light fabrics in the piecing, not using just one light for the piecing in that month’s round.
You can also see that I used several reds in the bricks that look like Dominos that have fallen…and several burgundys for the zig zags. To me, the variety of fabrics make the quilt more interesting…as well as giving it a more vintage look.
The quilt top is quite heavy and has a lot of small, intricate piecing. When I quilted the wall hanging I learned that quilting a pieced section as one unit made it difficult to have an even stitch length on both front and back.
The seams get in the way of doing a nice rocking stitch, but I like the look of the cables. In quite a few places I had to do a punch and stab stitch…which leaves me undecided as to how I’ll quilt the larger top.
On the one hand…I like the look and can’t think of what I’d do differently. On the other hand…the quilting will take longer and if I ever enter the quilt in a show, the judges will take points off because they want the quilting stitch to be the same size on front and back. Oh what shall I do?