medallion quilt-a-long: final round!

Who’d have thought it – I’ve completed the final round of my Medallion Quilt-A-Long!

Oh my goodness, this quilt top is BIG! I pieced the final round and attached it on the weekend at Sewjourn. It was one of my goals for the weekend, so I was really pleased to get it done on Friday afternoon. This was the “anything goes” round, thank goodness – I have now used up pretty much every teensy bit of my Australian fabric designer stash. There are bits of fabric from Aunty Cookie, Ink & Spindle, Pippijoe, Prints Charming, Kristen Doran, Saffron Craig and Yardage Design, most of which had been marinating in my stash for a few years now.

To give you an idea of just how big this is, here it is draped over a queen sized bed.

I have to be honest and state that the top isn’t actually quite finished. All those appliqued birds are fused in place, but not stitched. I plan on using the blanket stitch on my Mum’s fancy sewing machine to do that. I’d also like to do more embroidery on the centre panel. Yes, it would have been intelligent to do that before I sewed a whole lot of fabric around it, but I’m not always that intelligent. I’m planning on backing it in fabric from the coordinating Prints Charming Daisy Chain range, once GJs have their next sale on quilting fabric! Then I’ll send it off to be professionally basted. I just can’t see myself finding a large enough space to do that part myself. But I do plan on quilting it myself. So expect this to be finished and on a bed somewhere around, say, 2018…

I do have to add – I love this quilt top! It evolved quite organically, due to the nature of the quilt-a-long, and I’m glad that I stuck to my own brief of using stash fabrics. It was challenging, yet completely enjoyable. Thanks so much to Meredithe – without her prompting this quilt top would never have come into existence! You can check out the progress of the other quilt-a-long participants over on the flickr group.