Modern Medallion Quilt Along - Week One

This week has brought the beginning of the Modern Medallion Quilt Along!  And for those of you playing along, I thought I'd give you a quick rundown of how the first step of this pattern went for me, along with a couple of tips/pointers.

First of all - make sure if you are using low volume fabrics in your quilt that you have a TONNE of them!  I was really worried about not having enough, until I did my fabric pull and found 37 fat quarters!  Doh!  I am at the finish line now and can tell you that I have used half to three quarters of each fat quarter!  That's a lot of low volume!

If you are unsure what qualifies as low volume, here's my take - any pale/light background fabric that has a print on it!  So they could be anything from white to pink/blue etc, as long as they are a pale tone.  One trick to help can be taking a photo of your fabrics, then editing it to black and white, and you will be able to pick out the lighter and darker tones.

Now, on to the construction.

 

The pattern calls for lots of Improvisation piecing and wonkiness.  I can tell you now that this has been incredibly difficult for me to embrace!  Drawing up my NYB Contest paper piecing patterns was excruciating, and took lots of patience.  I DID NOT use a compass or anything trace-able - I literally free hand drew them.  As you can obviously see above!  The one thing I could not let go however, was the points.  I am a strong believer in triangle points not being lost!!!

The sewing together of the arcs with triangles was super easy - I would like to think I am a pretty advanced paper piecer, so it did not worry me at all.  But the arcs.  THE ARCS!!!!!!  I am also a pretty experienced curves put-together-er, but this had me absolutely freakin stumped!  Because I had no pattern as such, I just could not get the sizing of the fabric pieces correct, and was incredibly grateful for a two hour lunch date with a friend that day.  I'd already unpicked the black centre piece twice before lunch, but returned home with a calmer exterior and curved the s*it out of it!!

So my biggest tip for this part of the pattern - PATIENCE.  Take is slow.  Have your unpicker close by ;)

This is how my centre medallion looked when finished....

As you can see - the wonkiness was well and truly pulled off!  If I had to do it again, I think I would have used four different fabrics for the centre pieces - but - I still love it!

Pop over to Schnitzel & Boo later on today, where Kristi will share her week of 

Modern-Medallion-ing!

And if you stop by here on Monday, I will have a tutorial for you for the drunken geese border!  Have a fabulous weekend! xxx