The lure of the Medallion

There is something about the Medallion quilt that is irresistible. I am so very close to finishing my Marcelle Medallion from Alexia's book Liberty Love.  If you are on Instagram the hashtag #marcellemedallion brings up a zillion different amazing versions of this quilt. To make it mine I reversed some of the traditional values, as you can see in the geese. The geese are the light value and the background is dark, I am continuing with this theme in the last plus border. It needs to be finished and I am SO close.  I also found the perfect backing fabric by Alexander Henry at Island Quilter, so at this point I really have no excuse for not finishing. 

I used some of my favorite fabrics in this quilt and sadly the last of my plum mendocino mermaids.

I must say the quilting part of this project makes me shudder a little bit. I think I will keep it very simple with parallel lines spaced about a half inch apart. 

I had the pleasure of quilting Cindy Wien's Marcelle medallion quilt, she has a wonderful blog post here with full shot pictures and all the details about her fabrics, etc. She used primarily solids and as you'll see her quilt is stunning. You may have already seen this quilt floating around the internet and Pinterest, Cindy has a wonderful aesthetic and is not afraid of bold color or pattern.

 This quilt struck me as very playful and I tried to capture that feeling with the quilting. Her workmanship is superb and this quilt managed to stay very square which is no small feat considering she used mostly Oakshot and Kaffe wovens. If my memory serves me that is shot cotton on the back too...yikes!!! How I managed to keep good tension on this quilt is a mystery.

I had a few inquiries about the 1" grid that I quilted on my X-Plus quilt that I blogged about last week. I DID have to turn the quilt. Meaning; I loaded the quilt onto my long-arm, quilted 1" horizontal lines all the way down, then unloaded the quilt, reloaded the opposite direction and completed the crosshatch. 

I use a very handy little tool you can find online from Linda's Electric Quilters, called a crosshatch circle, you can find it here. 

The circle is used by placing the template around the hopping foot.

Just as your hopping foot can be used as a guide for 1/4" these circle templates offer that same guide in increments of 1/4" and go up to 1-1/2".

 As you can see in this next picture I line up the outside of the guide to the last line stitched and my next line of stitching is exactly an inch from the previous line. (I lined it up with the vertical lines so it would be easier to see, I quilted all of the lines horizontally though) 

I'm basically using it as a ruler, once it is lined up with the previous line of stitching I turn on my channel lock and start stitching. 

Cool huh? 

I use it as a guide but you can also use it with a ruler. If you follow the link above there is a video on how to use this tool. 

I hope that helps you if you are considering a crosshatch quilting project, turning is not my favorite thing to do but I have found it to be the only way to do an allover grid on a long arm. It is a simple quilting treatment that really compliments most quilt tops and the quilt stays very soft.

Have a wonderful week, I will be finishing cleaning and getting ready for a big garage sale this weekend! Hopefully next week I will have some good shots of my finished and clean studio!!

xo