Maths is not a popular subject in my house. None of my children enjoy it and maths teaching is very variable to put it mildly. We were ecstatic if not surprised when no. 1 son passed his maths GCSE but the twins are still going through the grind of learning what they need to to get this qualification . The most common complaint is they can never imagine an occasion in their future when they are going to need to use geometry, solving simultaneous equations, trigonometry  etc etc.  Well I can now say that in the highly unlikely circumstance of them having to design a medallion quilt then their maths could eventually be of use to them.

I had four blocks too many left over  from this quilt of Siblings Together Bee 4. (For more on this wonderful charity see the tab above).

I picked out blue and green ones and they became the centre of a medallion quilt. It struck me that rather than randomly make blocks for the next layer I needed to think about size and dimension and make to order.

Out came the graph paper and pencil and on the basis that the centre measured 24” by 24” I decided if the blocks were either 3” or multiples of 3” then I couldn’t go wrong. Well that was an ambitious thought but with much reworking and playing with sizes I got to a workable design. Of course the complication is the significant difference between the size you have to cut versus the finished size  allowing for seams.

It was a fun make.  Some pleasant mindless sewing of flying geese and then the plus block.  Assembling it was a bit more nerve wracking seeing whether my maths worked or more correctly whether the assembled pieces were precisely pieced to make the required length.  Well with a bit of tugging we got there. So thanks to the ladies of ST Bee 4 for their patience in using their blocks and special thanks to a Helen @themagpiecat who kindly offered to make two corner units,  it got done.

I decided that it called for some free motion quilting.  It was time consuming not so much doing the negative space but stitching in the ditch of all the pieced units. Took me hours and hours. It helped having this sawn off ankle!  I’d seen on Karin’s blog  The Quilt Yarn  about a modified ankle which made visibility better. This is for the Pfaff 4.2 QE. in effect as you can see from the pictures it cuts off the bit to which you attach the foot which isn’t needed when FMQing. Not the cheapest of ankles as it had to come from the US  but worth it. You can see in the second picture how much the normal ankle obscures things when you are quilting backwards.

So another quilt towards the 100 we need this year. Every quilt counts.

This is a Q1 FAL finish first blogged here.

Linking up with Kelly of My Quilt Infatuation and Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts