Medallion Quilt – In Progress

So here’s where I am now: I added a narrow light blue border to the central square, I also fused and stitched the small medallion in the centre of it yesterday (easier to do at this point than later when there will be a lot more fabric to handle).

Then I began working on the next border. I wanted to lighten up the  overall colour, so I stitched an asymmetrical block which implies an on-point border – I have the other three sets of pieces ready to stitch together. I discovered to my dismay that I had very little off-white fabric left so I went shopping to find something that would blend with the fabric I had already used. I came home with a couple of possibilities and chose one. If you didn’t know to look for the difference you wouldn’t notice it.

Next, I thought quite a bit about how to extend that border strip to fill the square. In the end I decided rather than piecing the ends with a block made from little pieces, I would just use a single light square extended with borders on each side. That leaves the corner piece (I’m placeholding the top left corner with an 11″ x 11″ piece of paper (the size of the finished block). What I’m planning at the moment is to piece four drunkard’s path blocks using five different fabrics and set them out in a whorl (with the same fabric in the rotated corner):

Whorl

That will bring back the circular motif of the central square. I thought about a block with pointed elements but echoing the spliced circle at the center is stronger. The last border will use a 6″ strip of printed border fabric that was part of the original Medici fabric set and I have enough to mitre the corners! Finished size will be close to 60″ x 60″.

I’m using the prints in the fabrics to create the detail rather than doing a lot of piecing. The challenge will be in the quilting – how to stitch the whole in a way that brings out the “layers” in the prints. That decision, however, is still a long way off.