My first medallion

Fresh off the high of the Sea Breeze mini quilt-along, I joined another. This is a mystery quilt-along hosted by Clover & Violet where we're making a mini medallion. I have Elizabeth Hartman's amazing Aviatrix Medallion on my long crafty to-do list, so I thought this would be a great way to get started.

It all starts with the medallion centre, with a fussy cut flower and butterfly. (Please excuse this poor first photo. Yet again I was doing some late-night sewing and super eager to join the quilt-along on Instagram, I snapped a quick picture with my phone and neglected to get a better one in daylight.)

When I picked up a FQ bundle of Arcadia, I earmarked it for this project (then dipped into it for another mini). But I decided to go out of my comfort zone a bit this time and add in other fabrics, rather than just rely on using co-ordinating ones from the same collection. Daring for me!

For the centre, I added some dark teal with metallic highlights from the Botanics line and wee squares of Cotton + Steel basics in gold with metallic too. (It was so tough to cut into that prized fabric - even just a few 1.5" squares!) The first border got awesome green polka dots to pair up with the butterflies. Can't go wrong with polka dots!

The second border brought back the teal for the flying geese to go with an Arcadia print, then I decided to go for a bright blue background from my stash. What's hard to see in the photo is the corners are a slightly lighter blue - a necessity because I was two squares short of the 32 needed for the flying geese. Two - unbelievable! Oh and the Cotton + Steel gold reappears because, to be honest, I made a little oopsy cutting the border. (A quarter-inch too narrow - how did that happen!?!)

So what do you think? Do all the fabrics work together? The beauty of the medallion is that as you add borders, no particular fabric stands out.

If you're looking for a low-pressure quilt-along to join, this is a good one. There's a new step posted only once a month. I caught up on the first three months in three days, so now I'm chomping at the bit for the next installment! And I learned a new skill too with the nifty overlapping first border. I'll certainly be using that again.