Quilting My Friendship Medallion

My Birthday Present to You giveaway remains open until Thursday. Click the link, or scroll down to the next post to comment. NOTE: Four of you who commented are "no reply" bloggers: Me, Myself, and I; linny; Joanne H.; and Jannelle. It means your Blogger profile is set to hide your email address. If you want to be in the draw, please contact me with a way to reply to you.

While I've been waiting to draw for the giveaway, I've been free-motion quilting the quilt - the one like the kit I'm giving away. Actually, I've been quilting on and off for a couple weeks now. It's a large quilt!

Instead of going straight to my favorite go-to quilt design, feathers, I decided to challenge myself to not quilt feathers - a "Feather Free" Quilt. Feathers just didn't seem to suit the fabrics, which have a more modern feel. And I didn't want dense quilting since this quilt is plenty heavy as it is.

In the center medallion I quilted a sort of spirograph design using my favorite quilting templates. They're a set of 1/8-inch thick, nested acrylic circles purchased from a vendor at the Overland Park, Kansas, Machine Quilters Showcase a few years ago.

 I used a Frixion pen and circle templates to mark my quilting lines.

The spirograph is quilted with aqua-colored 50-weight Aurifil.

I switched to white-colored Aurifil thread for the rest of the quilt. These Hole in the Barn Door blocks are free-hand quilted in a snail design - spiral in, and spiral back out.

Simple loop-de-loos here.

Flying Geese blocks are covered with arcs.

The most dense quilting is a wavy echo behind the red zig-zag blocks.

Triangles are echo quilted.

In this photo you might be able to see, on the back of the quilt, the last rounds of quilting. Nine Patch blocks were simply outline quilted, and the Sawtooth Triangles were quilted with arcs, once again drawn using my nested circle templates. I intentionally kept all the quilting very light.

85" X 96-1/2"

Binding is made with Patrick Lose's dark red Satinesque, a favorite fabric line of mine.

Between the grand size of this quilt (85" X 96-1/2") and recent rains that have left everything wet, I had a difficult time taking pictures on my deck. The quilt's laying across a bistro table and chairs.

Still, it's a very happy finish. I hope my quilt inspires some of you to head to Patchwork Pumpkin to sign up to make this fun, stash-busting quilt. It's a free pattern. Linda