Linky party open!

Morning all - hope everyone had a great Easter weekend and the Easter eggs were plentiful!  Apologies for opening the linky late this month - managed to get a bit of a flu and spent the weekend getting better.  So better late than never it's time to post an update on any progress on medallion quilts and our round robin bee!  Random number generator will chose a winner for Cindy's very generous prize of €20 euro voucher to spend on fabric @ Fluffy Sheep Quilting.

One of our bee's has just come back from a trip travelling in Asia so while she is making her starting block for me to add to, not having any progress on our round robin to share, I thought I'd share some medallion quilts I love for inspiration and what I learned about solid borders when making my first medallion quilt.

Image from first special edition of Love Quilting and Patchwork

Two of the most popular medallion quilt patterns in recent years are the Marcelle Medallion by Alexia Abegg and Made to Measure by Sarah Fielke. What really caught my eye on both of these is the use of black to add frames in the quilt drawing you into the centre block and the clever use of fabric in the prints used for borders (chevron and scissors above!)

Made to Measure quilt in Sarah Fielke's book Hand Quilted with Love

Sarah made a beautiful version of this quilt shown here in our gallery of our Happiness exhibition and I really like this one by Lynne@ Lily's Quilts in soft greys. Doing a quick search on pintrest using Marcelle Medallion will show you some amazing medallion quilts.  These are just some of the ones people have shared.

So what I learned in making my first medallion quilt, is that, in addition to making the length of the quilt easier to work with, adding a solid/un-pieced border can have some other very beneficial effects when making a medallion quilt.  Melanie @ Catbird Quilts has a really good series on making a medallion quilt and we followed her guidelines during our last QAL. 

This is as far as I got last time and there is one more round yet to be added to finish it.  In the making of this quilt top, I experienced 2 problems.  The first problem is the checkerboard border I used to frame my starting block was a bit stretchy and pulled my rectangle out of shape, when I added it.  Adding the first border by measuring and taking the average helped but adding a second border helped more.  It's still not right and I'm hoping blocking it will sort it out as I really don't want to unpick back but might have to!

I used Melanie's advice about using an un-pieced border to add some place for the eye to rest.  After adding in the low volume border the next round of diamonds was too busy against the checkerboard so I trimmed the first border down and added in the pink chevron to add a frame and give a resting place.  It's a skinny second border but without it the quilt wouldn't work so well at all!

Love this mad border by Sarah Fielke

But if you really like a pieced border check out this crazy pieced one again by Sarah Fielke from her book Hand Quilted with Love.  Am very tempted to try this sometime!

So onto the linky party.  Click on the button below to link up your progress!
-Ruth