Second Memory Wreath Block

Day 94: From the onset, I decided I was not going to push to complete a 12-block Memory Wreath lap quilt in a particular time frame. Rather, I'll work on it when the mood strikes me. I completed this second block yesterday and already had the pieces cut for a third. I glue-basted them to the paper forms this morning, and have started stitching the large triangles to the center. The unifying factors in this semi-scrappy quilt are the white bits and the dark green outer triangles. The centers will lean strongly toward green, and the interior triangles will be in two shades of a colour also represented in the center. Here, I chose aqua to be my "B" colour. The third block picks up yellow/gold for "B." This design doesn't stitch together quite as easily as Ring Cycles did, but it doesn't present any major issues with assembly.

First Memory Wreath Block

Day 76: And in other news, I completed the first block of a Memory Wreath quilt on Christmas Day. Memory Wreath was the pattern I used in the first quilt I ever made, some fifty-plus years ago. I dived in with both feet, totally unaware that it was not a "beginner level" project, but in the end, I have to say that it turned out quite nicely even if some of the meets were less than perfect. I sewed it by machine, as opposed to by hand using English paper piecing as I am doing here, and I have always regretted allowing my husband to talk me out of it when we separated. It was themed around birds. This version will use the same dark green fabric in every block, with the centers and inner triangles in a different colour. Next up, I'll be using aqua prints where I've used red here, picking up a hint of aqua from the center. The quilt will be lap-sized, only 12 blocks, and should come together fairly quickly even though I'm still polishing off old projects as my primary goal.

Stages of Development

Day 52: After exploring multiple options for how to lay out "Memory Wreath," my plan is finally carved in stone...or fabric, as it were. Did I want a dark background or a light one? How many colours did I want to use? Did I want the center to be the same colour as the corners? Where did I want to put the darks, the lights? I settled on a layout I've not used before in this design: white background, two colours, darks for the outer points, the center a lighter shade of the same colour, dark in a second colour for the big triangles and inward-pointing small triangles, and a lighter shade of the second colour for the interior points. Having come that far, it's time to put together a test block! For it, I used leftover solids, and have laid a few paper pieces on the sample for the sake of illustrating. Each piece gets glue-basted around a paper piece to hold its shape while sewing them together. The paper is not removed until additional pieces are attached to all sides, and in fact are often left in until the quilt is completed. However, the finished product will not look much like the test block because I'll be using prints, and I will make the outer points in all blocks (12 total) using the same green fabric. The center will also be a green print, different from the points. The remaining points and large triangles will be made using lights and darks of the second colour. Corners and edge triangles will be white. I've started sewing the test block together, although I may not dive into making the actual quilt until after the holidays. It will be smaller than usual, lap-sized, three blocks by four.

Memory Wreath - A Plan

Day 32: Back in the days of my innocent youth, I decided I wanted to start quilting. I browsed through all my books (I had quite a library of needlework references even then), and I came across "Memory Wreath" (aka "Crown of Thorns") in the "Woman's Day Book of American Needlework." I had no idea what I was getting into or what problems I might encounter along the way, so I just dived in. In the end, my "meets" may not have been as perfect as I would have liked, and some of the blocks required a substantial bit of easing to get the seams to line up, but the quilt was beautiful nevertheless. I made at least two more on the same pattern over the years, each one coming together a little more accurately than the earlier versions. Since then, my skills have improved even more, and I kept thinking, "I'd really like to make one more 'Memory Wreath' before I leave this world." And then I discovered English paper piecing, and a whole new vista opened up. Now I have a Plan. While I don't intend to make it "scrappy" like most of my quilts, I have a lot of fabrics to choose from. I want to theme each block in a different colour combination. The pieces shown in black here will be solids of the basic colour of each block, as will the center square (at least I think that's what I want to do, because it gets some solids out of my stash). Prints will be used for everything else, repeating as shown in the illustration. I will probably only make twelve blocks (lap size).