River City Round Robin 4 - Kathryn's Star Medallion

Next up in the #RiverCityRoundRobin was my mission impossible.

I love Kathryn. She is the kindest and sweetest and gentlest person.  I'm a yeller and a talker and, let's face it, a bit of a drama queen, and Kathryn is my exact opposite. She is serene and calm and just lovely. One of those people who are peaceful to be around.  She is also an incredible quilter.  And her quilt gave me proper anxiety that I was going to ruin it.

Kathryn started off with a giant box (as in you could fit a small child inside it) and a loving note...

So, if you read that you will have noticed Kathryn provided basically an entire box stuffed with Koi yardage and her favourite, long hoarded Cotton and Steel stash.  And of course, her starter...

Nothing too fancy... Just a perfectly pieced, perfectly pointy lone star...

You ay have also noticed she requested a medallion quilt.

I'm going to be super honest, I've never really fallen for the medallion quilt. I think because they're usually full of applique and Sun Bonnet Sue's and I don't know... They've just never been my bag. Perhaps it's the rebel in me not wanting to be a traditionalist (although I'm a quilter, so my happy fun time is possibly one of *the* most traditional hobbies you can have. Anyway...)

The first person to work their magic on this quilt was the lovely Vic.

Vic is another epicly talented quilter.  She is a genius for quilt maths, and has this fabulous mind that comes up with the weird and wonderful and she can pull colour from the air like magic. But that's nothing to be scared of. I'm sure she'll keep this super chilled and it'll be fine...

Or she can add fussy cut diamonds floating through the air :-O Wow!!!! Love, love love!!!!

Sandra then worked her wiles and added flying geese (have I mentioned that I'm scared of flying geese? I don't know how people can make these perfect pointy beauties and have then *fit*. I'm in horror of the quilt maths). Unfortunately, I can't find a photo from this stage... I know there is one, but I'm clearly bad at this whole "recording things as they happen" thing and should never be put in charge of documenting anything.

Laura was a bit like me, with this.  She got it and went OMG (and rightly so).  She went with super cute 8 point stars for corner stones, which I loved, but then she felt like she "hadn't done enough" and added an epic brick path/stacked coin border. Completely fabulous!!!!!

(I feel like I should add that the weird lines you see are not some kind of strange piecing choices... it's the light coming through the slats in my fence :-/)

I got this quilt of gorgeousness, and admit to felling completely out of my depth. It's just so incredible, and the workmanship on it is absolutely impeccable and my skills are not in this league. This sat in my sewing room for weeks (and I think this is the third quilt I've shown you guys and the third time I've told you I didn't have any idea what to do with it, but honestly, they're so cool and they change so much between rotations. And it's both the best part and worst part of this process that the picture in your head before you get it, is always so different to how it looks when it arrives on your doorstep).

I ummed and ahhed over it and eventually decided to go with arrows pointing into two corners.

I went with the darkest fabrics in the box (originally I had planned on bright pink, but then chickened out) and made a massive arrow that I absolutely hated.  I actually had to take it to Bec (who was due to get it next) and ask what I was doing wrong, because it worked in my head, but in practise, it just felt off. No balance, not the right vibe.

Bec suggested scaling down my arrow, and I literally chopped it in half, and suddenly I liked it again, and felt far more comfortable in this choice.

Sorry for the dodgy photo, but we agreed we wouldn't talk about it ;-).

I added a plain white (or a cotton and steel white) and passed it on.  I neglected to take a photo of it after it was all attached, but it didn't really change much from the above.

And it's now been passed to Bec to add the final touches before heading back to Kathryn.

And just for the record, no matter how much I'm whinging about this, I have absolutely loved this round robin thing. I have been pushed outside of my comfort zone, with fabric choices, and technique and just really wanting to do a good job for these other ladies.  I think this process has made me a *significantly* better quilter, and all my complaints are really just my insecurities.  Every single lady in this group have been nothing but supportive of each other the whole way through.

But there's still a couple more quilts to show you, so just hang on til next week, and I'll show you what we did for Vic :-)

E xx