Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL

It took me a while to do the final round, I think because I am still not totally convinced on the last one (stars).  But here's my process:

Seaweed/kelp and sea glass.  Both remind me of spending my growing up years at the beach.  The Puget Sound is not warm, but as a kid it is a great place to explore.  My grandparents used to have a house that had the backyard right on the beach... and then right around my preteen years they moved 40 minutes away.  The running complaint was that when my cousins and I were old enough to be able to cross the railroad tracks on our own and go to the beach, they moved to Monroe--which at the time (and still to a lesser extent) was a cow town.




My cousins and I liked to find the long kelp and jump on the heads.  If you lucked out, you found one that was still intact and it would make a pop sound (like bubble wrap, but better).  I'm sure that's not environmentally friendly, but we were kids and it was a fun adventure!

There were a lot of great memories of visiting their house (we lived in the same town, but they obviously had the best house to visit!).  I recall a time when my grandparents and parents were commenting about watching a crazy person being pulled by a parachute behind a boat (this was the pre-fancy parasailing days).... it turns out that it was my brother and his buddies. He always had fun adventures as a teen :) My parents didn't learn about a lot of those adventures until later of course.


The kelp was a fun process, as was the sea glass.  Both very Gwen Marston in style, but it isn't working for me.





Trying it with just the sea glass:


BTW, on sea glass... I was talking to the husband about my idea for the quilt and he had no idea what sea glass was.  I guess that's inland living for you.  So I explained the process of what happens to glass when it's being exposed to salt water and rocks/sand, as well as showing him some pictures.  We always seemed to find brown sea glass--likely beer bottles.  Occasionally we'd find some blue--which many could have been old fishing floats, and the clear was another that often found.

I ended up ripping off the kelp (I'll save that for something else), and decided to make more nordic stars.



My challenge is that the taupe fabrics came in a fat quarter pack and I am running out so I am getting creative in what I am putting together.  My yellow was a fat quarter from something else, and I am now totally out of that.  Fortunately I found another yellow in my Cherrywood Fabric stash, but the sea glass round has different yellows which works great.   With the stars it is about 29" square, and then the round with the sea glass, it is about 37"square.

To end the quilt, I am planning to do some embroidered flowers (or maybe some sort of pie variety writing? hmmmmm..... maybe some forks!) and then perhaps a round of red before the final taupe.  This was out of my comfort zone to make this quilt, it's not exactly my style, but I enjoyed the process. I have to admit, I unexpectedly like this top so far. I think the change I made between the last round and the sea round helped.

Linking up here for the final round of this QAL: http://humblequilts.blogspot.com/2016/10/gwennie-inspired-medallion-finale.html