The December challenge for Island Batik Ambassadors is to create a medallion quilt. Now, I have never been tempted to make a medallion quilt, so this would take some thought. Fortunately, we were given the list of challenges at the beginning of the year so I've had many months to think about my medallion. I really wanted this medallion to hang on my living room wall. I have
one wall with 12' ceilings and I've had a Trip Around the World quilt
hanging there for about 10 years--definitely time for a change! My finished quilt measures 78" square and I love seeing it hanging on my wall.
I chose the Lemon Grass line designed by Kathy Engle as a signature
collection for Whirligig Designs. Lemon Grass is a gorgeous collection
of blues and greens, and there are a few prints that have some purple
marbled in. I wanted to pull out some of the purple (my favorite
color!) so I added two fabrics from the Foundations collection,
Dandelion in Jelly and a Periwinkle dot. The background is Island
Batik's solid black.
The hardest part for me was choosing a center. I spent a lot of time thinking about possibilities and I kept coming back to a Carolina Lily block. Carolina Lily is a vintage block that I've always liked, and of course there is the added bonus of Carolina in the name, since I live in North Carolina. Since it's a vintage block there are a lot variations out there. Once I decide that I wanted to use Carolina Lily, I chose the Fat Quarter Shop's version that is part of their Classic and Vintage series, and I used the helpful tips from Julie at Crafty Quilter in my block construction.
After I decided on the Carolina Lily center, I went to EQ8. This is the first project I designed in EQ and made! I've used it for a few other projects this year but more to figure out fabric placement, not to create an actual design. I've been subscribing to Tech Know Quilters with Kari Schell of On Point Quilter and two of the months focused on medallion quilts. I used those lessons and the skills I'm slowly learning in EQ to create my design and to finalize fabric selection and placement.
I love the fabrics in Lemon Grass so much that I knew I wanted a few borders to just be the fabric, as opposed to blocks. I started with one of the fabrics called Rain that I really loved and added purple flowers to the cornerstones to try to create a design that is cohesive with the center. Do you see anything different from the photo above and the final design? I originally used the same border fabric with the corner flowers, but after adding the next border decided it would show up better with the black fabric, so I switched them out.
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before the switch to black background in the corners
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The next border is pieced Hattie's Choice blocks, one of the Blocks on Board (or BOB) dies from Accuquilt. It was fun to use Hattie's Choice in a way that was completely different from the March challenge.
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Hattie's Choice border
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From the beginning, I knew I wanted to use the dragonfly print in Marbles. I love all the colors in it and I wanted that purple element to not just be in the center. This is also where part of the name comes from. There is a Dragonfly Pond at one of my favorite local parks, Reedy Creek Park. And again I repeated those purple flower buds from the center.
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Getting too big for my deck!
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The final border is square-in-a-square blocks cut with dies from the Accuquilt Go Cube. I like it as a frame to the quilt. If you count the 1" solid black borders in between each round, this quilt has 7 borders! But even if you don't count those, there are 4 borders--2 pieced and 2 of a single fabric with pieces cornerstones.
When the top was done, I layered it with Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 black batting. The black batting is fabulous for quilts with dark backgrounds like this one. For the quilting, I wanted something that would blend well with the greens and blues as well as the black background. I looked at several Aurifil threads and settled on color 2735, which was the middle blue in my Aurifil Como Colorbuilder set from my first ambassador box of the year. I tried something new with the quilting and did an on-point square around the very center of the quilt, then continues making squares that radiated out using 1 1/2" intervals. I don't typically like designs that require burying threads but I'm pleased with how this looks, especially in the center. I put a fresh Schmetz Chrome Microtex needle in my machine before I started the quilting--such smooth stitching!
The materials used to make this quilt were provided to me by Island Batik, AccuQuilt, Hobbs, Aurifil, & Schmetz.
This is my final Island Batik challenge of 2020. I've been so honored to work with Island Batik and their industry partners for the second year. The challenges have really stretched my artistry and creativity and I enjoy seeing what I can come up with each month.
