Feeling Blue and Delighted About It!

Today I finished the medallion for a quilt that I am making for my husband.  The block that I am using for the medallion is called Blazing Star and it is from the book titled Quick-Strip Paper Piecing by Peggy Martin.  The block pattern in the book finishes to 12 inches.  As this is to be the centerpiece of this quilt, I enlarged the pattern so that it will finish out at 25 inches.

I am totally in love with the Kaffe Fassett Blue Wood Ear fabric that the medallion is "floating" on.   Last year, while making the Craftsy BOM quilt, I used this same fabric in red and fell in love with the effect then.  It's funny, because it wasn't a piece that I purchased, it was given to me in a swap and initially, I wasn't sure that I like it.  It kind of reminded me of camo.  But I forged ahead and used it in the block shown below.  It was one of the most commented on and after it was finished, I could see the dimensionality of the fabric. 

As I looked for the fabric in another colorway to make my husbands quilt, I came across the blue.  Oh My Gosh, I had to have it.  I called everywhere, I emailed everywhere,  finally I posted a picture of what I wanted with a plea on my Flickr site and sure enough someone came up with the answer I needed.  It was in Australia!  So, I emailed and ordered and a few weeks later...

I just wanted to roll in it!  I was the proud owner of 4 meters of this delicious fabric.  The feel of this is just amazing, so soft and wonderful. 

The first thing I did was to pull some fabric that would work with this and still have a masculine feel...or at least not a prominent feminine feel.  Then I scanned them into my computer and printed out color photos of each one.  I printed an extra copy of my pattern and did a mock up of two sections, using the photo copied "fabric".
After that was done, I scanned that into my computer and used a kaleidoscope program to get the effect.  Below were my two mock ups.

Now it was getting exciting.  Everyone was putting in feedback, the majority loved the second one and I can see why, but it has a very floral, feminine feel to it, like a flower.  I didn't want that, but I still wasn't exactly happy with the first one.  It needed some swap outs on some of the fabric choices to get the effect I was seeking.  You can see below the results of that swap.

If you can sew a straight line and follow basic directions you can make this medallion.  Everything is broken into components for you.  You can see that process below.

First you construct each segment

then you sew the segments to each other in pairs

When you have a nice stack like the one above, with all your seams pressed open, you start making quarter bits, pairing two of the finished segments together as shown below. You will have four of these.  Now you will sew two of these together to make one half and finish by sewing your halves together... 

Just for fun I wanted to see what it would look like if I did them all the same...and since I had half of them done, I put them up on my design wall...with this result.

This would be nice also, but there is so much more interest with alternating the fabrics.  Always fun to play with possibilities though.

So, I will continue to build on the center medallion for Johns quilt and more will be revealed as time goes along!