Modern Medallion Quilt along (2)

It's time to wrap around some borders!

So, a medallion quilt has a centre followed by a number of borders, plain or decorative, which radiate concentrically to the outside of the quilt.  The New York Beauty Contest forms the centre of the Modern Medallion and it is followed by two wrapped borders, known in the pattern as "Plain Jane" and "Drunk Geese".  They both fundamentally use the wrapped border technique, which was something new to me (again!)

Normally I just pop on two opposite sides, press and then two longer opposite sides and press and there you have it, a border.  This one is different in that you start each side at the edge, leaving overhang at the other and sew, leaving a gap at the overhang edge. You then work like this clockwise and then sew up the flappy ends to form a continuous, flowing border.  No tutorial here as there are some great ones already - like this one by MsMidge. 

The wrapped border isn't really show to its best on the Plain Jane, but it did give me practice:

I chose the tangerine fabric (Michael Miller's Mirrorball Dot in case you were wondering) to really make that centre pop as there is a lot of low volume background material in this quilt.  So of course I needed to turn up the (70s) volume in this border!

The next wrapped border is the Drunk Geese.  Or in my case "Lost Goslings" - spot the little guys trying to get home :)

I played around with this one a bit as I have done wonky/cut loose geese before.  (For those of you wondering about the "Drunk" title - it is a quilter in joke.  This pattern done traditionally (ie straight, measured and precisely) is called "Flying Geese".  Except these guys are wonky, freestyle and not at all precise. Someone mentioned making a cocktail in their honour on our facebook page, I reckon it would need Grey Goose vodka in it...mmm.

Anyway, I digress.  So the border is also wrapped (you can see it better here with the little geese flying in from the edges) but I have fiddled with the design a bit to make it my own.  As you can see, some flocks are flying towards each other, or away from each other, while the original pattern suggests all in one direction.  I wanted a bit more movement and craziness here as it was all looking a bit polite by the end of the Plain Jane.  I also swapped a lime and orange goose around to join their opposite flocks...just for fun.

I have used the citrus oranges and greens from the centre but also added a more leafy/grassy green and a blue -green to my palette, hinting at how I want the borders to now develop away from a lot of orange and lime towards more muted tones.  I am hoping this makes this central section really draw attention.  We'll see if it works.  That's the fun (and really scary) thing about medallion quilts - you don't really know where it will take you or if things will work out as planned.  I get the feeling it will be a Tim Gunn quilt - "Make it work!"