Ramble

This is month three of the Ramble quilt block of the month club. I have really been enjoying Tara Faughnan's instructional videos that go along with this. She is a great teacher, and having taken an in person class with her, heard her key note lecture at QuiltCon, as well as doing this BOM, her personality comes through and that is a good thing. I love the design, and I also love that it is a gentle skill builder. I believe it is billed as an intermediate pattern, and it is I think confident beginner friendly. The end result is more pleasing to me than her quilt Transverse, which was her last sew along. She points out in the first video that a medallion quilt has some risks associated with it, the first of which is that it is a medallion quilt, so with each layer outward there is a risk that it won't fit. Then she shows you the differences that occur if you sew an exact 1/4" and a scant 1/4" seam, if you press the seams open or to the side, and how quickly those differences add up when you are building in ever increasing outward layers. So the design has some fudge built in to it to allow for that. What a great idea! Then there is the fabric--I find the need for so many colors to be over kill, but then that is what she is known for--the colors. So maybe all is forgiven except that it is hard to sort and tag them all, and I am positive that by the end there will be design modifications. Already by month three I have some adjustments that have occurred, and the truth be told, I am not that great at following directions, and her written directions are a bit on the sparse side, so that is a perfect storm waiting to happen. The fabric is from the Windham Artisan fabric line, which has different colored threads in the warp and the weft, which gives it a beautiful depth and feel for a "solid", mostly because it isn't quite that, but oh my goodness, the fraying. If that drives you crazy, pick a different facbric. I have been sewing with Art Gallery Fabric Solids and they are so much the opposite of that! In any case, this is a bright, fun, and not too hard quilt that I am enjoying putting together, and hanging out virtually and not in real time with Tara Faughnan is icing on the top.