Medallion, 228cm x 228cm

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The center diamond quilt. For me it is without the shadow of a doubt a perfect quilt. All the points meet up perfectly in the sawtooth edge. All the corners work wonderfully. There is a harmony and balance in the whole quilt that calms...ZZZZZ.

Actually I am tickled that it is finally finished. For all its perfection it is a downright boring masterpiece. I pray to God that I am never inspired to do another quilt in only two colors. This does mark the beginning of work with the quilting "high tech" of the rotary cutter, though. And perhaps all that so-called precision is due to the new instrument. The cutting was greatly simplified. I no longer had to trace a template onto the cloth and cut out with scissors. This may seem like a trivial point, but the economy of time was considerable by measuring with the ruler and cutting out at the measuring stage on the edge of the ruler. The women at the store couldn't believe I had never worked with a rotary cutter when they saw the pictures of my quilts. I thought to myself that, in fact, whole generations of women made quilts without this technique so what's to wonder at. But frankly it does make a difference in time and I'm glad to have switched over to modern techniques. When I had finished this stage, though, I craved color, and decided to put it aside to quilt at another time. Apart from boring, I'd call it stately with its sober colors of darkest navy blue and Liberty greens floral print. This is not in keeping with the Amish tradition of solid colors but I liked the combination. The reason for the postscript is that the history of a quilt is never finished with the completion of the top sheet. The promised postscript: in retrospect, let me say that this medallion quilt was a desperate attempt to keep sewing even though I was dried up for fun ideas. I suppose every quiltmaker should do a medallion at one time. It has a great calming effect because the piecing is a cinch and those vast expanses of the same color are like fields to expand one's imagination in. As I've said before, my medallion is deepest navy blue with a light, spring green of Liberty printed cotton. The trick to making all the sawtoothed edges work like a snap, besides using the rottary cutter, is to do the initial edge first before cutting the square for the center, and not the contrary. I finished the top sheet many years before I unearthed it from the piles in my quilt collection in order to quilt it. By the time I was ready to finish it, the Liberty print was completely unavailable, so I used a flashy, sold, citrus green to bind the edges. This is truly a feature that perks up the whole thing. The other element that adds interest is the detailed quilting motifs in each large navy blue area using citrus green thread. I used 4 different motifs: 4-sided objects (lop-sided squares), triangles, wormy squiggles and tears. In the center square there is a happy dance of all four motifs. The outside navy borders are all quilted with an overall criss-cross design. If the description sounds upbeat and interesting, the actual work to do it was long and tedious, I must say. I had to keep my eye on the vision of how it would be once finished to find the courage to go on. As is always the case, finishing this one was a real triumph.

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