August Tip

The Medallion Quilt

Using the bits and pieces

If you have just a small piece of a favorite fabric, or perhaps a leftover or sample block, you can turn it into a work of art, practice your border skills and create a wonderful quilt, usually in just a few days.

Start by selecting your medallion: the very center of your quilt. It doesn't have to be square. Some ideas: small paper pieced block, a 6" or smaller piece of a great fabric, a repeat of a great pattern, a leftover block.

Next decide if it needs to be on point. You can also decide to place it on point now, but take it back off point later by adding some triangles. Another thought is to make the center an octagon by using small triangles on the 4 sides, and larger ones across the corners, which make your top, bottom and 2 sides.

Now comes the fun part. Dig through your stash and find lots of fabric which coordinates with your center. Don't forget the scrap box, because the first few rows will be small. Look through quilt books and see what kind of borders they show. Get some border books if you think this might be something you'd like to do often. Decide on a "neutral" fabric -- something you can use to pull the quilt together. This could be a nice white, cream, or black, a solid or tone on tone that coordinates with your center, or any other fabric you'd like to use throughout the quilt. (Despite what your mom, the dentist and your 4th grade teacher told you, "neutral" doesn't have to mean tan, gray or white. Purple can be a great neutral!) You'll need between 1/2 and a full yard of the neutral, depending on how large you want to make the finished quilt. You'll need 6 or more pieces of coordinating fabric, from 1/8th yard to 1/2 yard.

If your center is very small, you may want to add some plain strips of various fabrics to start. Don't do too large a border for the first row, or you may lose a small medallion in the first border. Add a strip of your neutral. Now add a pieced border, and another strip of your neutral. The neutral strips look best when very narrow -- 1" or less, but this is totally up to you. If using very dark colors with a cream neutral, you may want the interest of a 3" cream strip border somewhere near the middle of all the borders. A wider strip also makes for great applique placement.

Continue to add borders with occassional neutral strips between them until you have the quilt the size you want. 5 borders averaging 3" on a 6" medallion set on point gives a nice wallhanging size. And there is no rule that you have to finish the quilt square, either. You may decide to make the last border using a sunburst design, so it finishes octagon.

The hardest thing is stopping. You may decide to stop when you run out of neutral fabric. You may decide to stop when you could cover the garage with it. Each time you add a border, especially a larger border or a set of traingles to put it on- or off-point, your quilt grows fast. But trust me, at some point you'll really have to stop and finish the quilt.

Now sandwich, quilt, bind and embellish your masterpiece, and know that no one has a quilt exactly like yours, and no one ever will!