Goose in the Pond

 

Earlier this year, I took an 18" red, white and blue block out of my "Orphan" box and put it on my design wall.  Every time I worked on something else, "Goose in the Pond" in red, white and blue called to me.  Last week during the big snow storm, I started thinking that it would make a good center for a medallion quilt.   My sister Jacqueline had sent me two nice pieces of red fabric that would go well with it, and the various books and websites I looked at offered more ideas than I could deal with.

I designed it as a one-woman round robin with the following rounds:

  1.  Blue and white stripes with mitered corners which I sewed by hand to make the stripes match

  2.  Hourglass blocks in red/white stripes and white

  3.  Friendship stars with white backgrounds and square-in-a-square corner blocks using a fabric printed like redwork

  4.  More blue and white stripes but perpendicular this time

  5.  Chubby piano keys in various shirtings and red scraps

  6.  Blue and red strips with friendship star blocks in the corners

You can see the outer border corner a little better in this picture.  Now that it measures 58" square, I have stopped for a while - or maybe forever.  Maybe not.   Maybe 12" Ohio Star blocks around the outside?  The current last round is fairly heavy and dark; I kept moving it out to the edge for balance. 

This was an exercise in measuring.  One night even I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking about the measurement of the next round. 

This was a good process for me - look at an orphan block for several months and finally get inspired to use it.  Maybe I'll do it again soon with three 12" Civil War blocks that seem too nice to use embedded in a quilt back.