a medallion quilt top

I didn’t set out to make a medallion quilt, but it would seem as though I have. I pulled out these fabrics recently, pulling mostly from a fat eighth bundle of Anna Maria Horner’s Honor Roll line, and adding in other prints that I felt had that same kind of vibe.

I started this one as I had just finished up my Liberty Churn Dash, so of course churn dash blocks were still on my mind….but this time in miniature. I made a few and squealed over how cute they were, but of course there’s no way I’d have patience for an entire quilt of 3″ churn dash blocks, so I put them together for the center of this quilt (initially inspired by an image of this quilt, which I had pulled out of a magazine ages ago).

From there I had fun building out, adding various rings – some rings made up of other blocks (some half square triangles, plus blocks and larger churn dashes), and others of just a printed fabric. It was an interesting challenge to select what I felt was ‘the right’ next print, and I spent quite a long time auditioning prints on the design wall and studying them from afar.

From the get go, my goal was to use what I had – this wasn’t a planned project, but I was really into it, and I didn’t want to have to sit around waiting for fabric to arrive, so I decided that if I didn’t have enough, I’d have to use something else or come up with some other solution. It added an extra little challenge into this project, as there were many times when I felt I had found ‘the perfect’ fabric, only to discover that I was way short!

And in the end I’m really happy with how it turned out! I particularly love those projects that come along unplanned and keep me really interested the whole way through.