My medallion quilt

For a long time I've wanted to design and make a medallion quilt but wanted to take some of the hard work out of the process if possible.  So I came up with the idea of designing one around 2 1/2" squares and HSTs which could be cut with a Sizzix die cutter.  I have the long dies of each of these which can cut about 50-60 2 1/2" squares or HSTs in one roll and the HSTs then need no trimming.  Using those, I could cut a lot of scraps up very quickly.

My colour scheme was based around Ansonia by Denyse Schmidt with co-ordinating scraps thrown in to give the quilt a much scrappier look.  The dark in that line is a dark brown which I substituted for black and charcoal which I prefer.  Hence the quilt was called Back to Black because I think it's the black in the quilt which makes the other colours really pop.  The centre medallion was paper pieced because you can't beat paper piecing for a nice pointy star.

The quilt is a whopping 80" square and, although the maths for that would have been a bit of a kerfufle, designing it in Touchdraw (an app for iPad, mac and android) meant the maths was all done for me.  By that I don't mean that TD automatically calculates your yardage etc but it's easy to measure what goes where when you can manipulate the design endlessly in a graphics program - something you just couldn't do with pen and paper.  The backing was the most fabulous Suzuko Koseki print from Sew Me A Song.

And if you'd like to make your own version of this medallion quilt, it appears in issue 13 of Love Patchwork and Quilting.