marcelle medallion fever

The moment I saw this quilt in Alexia Abegg's new book Liberty Love, I knew I would have to drop everything to make one. The quilt is called the Marcelle Medallion and it just has such a fun, fresh feeling. I'd been craving a new design with some challenging piecing that would enable me to delve deep into my stash, and this pattern fulfilled all of those needs.

I've seen some other gorgeous versions with really original color schemes, but honestly I was so in love with Alexia's version that I didn't stray too far from the colors of her quilt. I had a ball stash-diving for prints old and new, brights and neutrals, Japanese treasures, beloved Liberty and favorite designer cottons. This quilt really got me to cut into my ever-growing cream and white stash too. Please don't be fooled into thinking I used a lot of scraps for this quilt - I actually cut into many fat quarters and yardage for the first time.

The center star is a bit tricky with it's set in seams but from there it's pretty easy. And fun! Lots of triangles, flying geese and crosses. One of the toughest parts is choosing the border fabrics - especially that really thick one. I'm very happy I went with the Tsuru print. 

The only major changes I made to the original quilt was to add the two outer scrappy borders. The inner bright borders was just comprised of 5.5 inch squares and fit perfectly. Then for the outside border I cut random lengths of 2.5 inch wide neutrals and added corner squares in a Liberty print.

Just in time my backing and binding fabric arrived! I'm still trying to figure out how to quilt this one. I want to do something that will be worthy of the design and challenge me without screwing it up! I'm getting more and more confident with my free motion quilting skills and this I'm sure will be another great one to practice on!

If you'd like to see some more gorgeous, inspiring versions of the Marcelle Medallion, be sure to pop over to Instagram and search under hashtag "medallionalong".