Butterfly Medallion Quilt

Happy Mother's Day everyone, I hope you're having a lovely day. (Not sure my friends on the other side of the Atlantic are celebrating today but this side certainly are.) After a mega busy few weeks here in lovely Cork, I'm finally catching up on myself with some blog writing. First job is to finally post my Medallion QAL progress, which is happily a finish.

I had decided from the start to make this medallion in a baby size. Originally I was planning to stop at 40" square, but as the design-as-you-go process played out, I found that I needed to go a tiny bit bigger, so this stopped at 43".

The central block was a butterfly block, inspired by Megan's tutorial.

 

We used the process outlined by Melanie in her great tutorials. Alas, quilt maths is not my strong point and only a couple of borders in I managed to mess up my border width giving me a very challenging quilt top width to work with on the next border. After a LOT of trial, error, ripping and ranting, I finally got a triangle border to work.

 

Inpired by Cindy's border, I did square-within-square cornerstones on this border, fussy cutting some little girls for it, and I think this is the detail I love the most about this quilt.

 

 Each little girl is different.

I finished off with a skiny border and progressed quickly onto basting and quilting. I did wonder how the basting was going to work out, as I've found medallion quilts can look a bit ripply and don't lie quite flat when you're piecing the top, but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was.

Love that crinkly texture that quilting with Aurifil 50wt gives my quilts. It just sinks into the quilt when you wash it and feels so lovely.

I used a bright and cheerful print on the back. One of the reasons I stopped at 43" rather than adding more borders was that I didn't want to piece a back because it would break up the effect of that lovely geometric pattern. (Plus, obviously, I'm lazy when it comes to piecing quilt backs).

You can see the third cornerstone in this picture too - I think that girl is my favourite.

Lastly the binding - what else but pink hearts for a baby girl?

This quilt has gone off to meet its new little owner, and I know that it will be very loved. It was a lot of work, with a lot of tiny piecing in it, but so very worth it. I think it is one of my favourite quilts I've ever made. It was made almost entirely from fabrics in my scrap basket and stash, with the exception of the binding and some of the background fabric. Just goes to show that scrappy doesn't have to mean mismatched and random but can be bright and pretty and together.

 

I'm linking up with the Medallion Quiltalong over on the MGQ Ireland page.

Medallion-ing Along in scrappy style

Being on annual leave is great. It's been a really productive week here in my house and I have piles of things to show you over the course of the week.

For now, I'm going to stick to Medallions.  Posting my inspiration mosaic last week worked exactly as inspiration mosaics are supposed to work. I was, really, truly inspired. I loved every single one of those blocks (as I should, I spent ages whittling down my list), but the ones that really caught my imagination used curved piecing - the butterfly and retro flowers block. I did a bit more browsing around online trying to figure out block construction for them, then took out the Accuquilt Go! Baby and got cutting. First I tried the butterfly block - inspired by this tute by Megan of Canoe Ridge Creations. I needed to change up the measurements a bit for my block but it worked beautifully. The first one I made used yellow scraps - nice, but a bit insipid for a central block. So then I tried a pink version using all pink scraps. Bingo. I added a white border to bring it up to the recommended size (15.5")

I fell head over heels for it and my path was set. (I also then tried a retro flowers block which worked fabulously too - but I made that into a different quilt) Next I neeed to add the borders. The QAL offer a few different options for how blocks and borders work. Because mine is not set on point, I needed to add a couple of borders. Firstly, I added a lovely Tanya Whelan paisley print. Then I pondered what to go for on the 2nd border. I originally thought about triangles but then decided on HSTs. I've done a similar border in my Made to Measure quilt top (she who is still unfinished 8 months later, shame, shame) and love how those triangles appear to whirl around the central block, bringing so much movement to the quilt.  I used a low volume grey print for the background, and I cut some more scrappy squares to halve for HSTs. This brought the quilt top up to 24.5"

If you're following me on Instagram you'll know I've already done another couple of borders which soften out the brights a little bit but I want to keep track with the QAL linkys here on the blog so I'll post that the next day. I need to start the next pieced border tomorrow - I'm thinking triangles for this one (I have loads of pretty ones leftover from the triangle quilt, it would make really good use of them) and for the cornerstones, economy blocks sized down slightly. What do you think? Any other suggestions? For now, I'm going to sit back with a mid-week-it's-allowed-because-I'm-on-annual-leave-this-week glass of wine, and admire what I've done so far.