The Cultivate Quilt pattern is a medallion quilt that incorporates several different quilt blocks into a unique design that is classic, yet modern. In this blog post, I go over some of the challenges of sewing a medallion quilt with simple fixes and ways to modify the Cultivate quilt pattern to make it your own.
What is a Medallion Quilt
First off, what am I even talking about? A medallion quilt is a quilt that has a large center block, or center medallion, surrounded by many borders that can be pieced or appliqued. The eye gravitates towards the statement in the middle which is the focus of the quilt but can’t help dancing around at the other details. Below, is the center, or medallion, of the Cultivate quilt.
Sewing a Medallion Quilt
Sewing a medallion quilt can be a bit tricky or frustrating if you are a beginner quilter, but also very rewarding. For example, in many quilt patterns, you piece blocks individually, sew them into rows, and then sew the rows together. Keeping the quilt apart until the very end in typical patterns allows for each block to be an exact size and ease when sewing. In a medallion quilt, you continually grow your quilt by adding border after border around the edge.
There are a few problems that may arise if you do not plan for them. First, your quilt may become slightly off from a perfect square – think like a parallelogram. One corner may get a bit wider or the length of one side may be more or less than another side. I’m not talking drastic measures here, but maybe just a quarter an inch. This can still be quite frustrating. Another complaint of some is the work involved in having your whole quilt under your sewing machine every time you need to sew on a row. I happen to love sewing medallion quilts, however, I think these are valid concerns that need to be addressed. I have some tips to avoid or fix these issues for you.
Tips & Tricks
Here is my advice just from experience. I have yet to be honored with any sort of Medallion Honorary Sewist award, but a little experience with trial and error goes a long way.
Problem 1: My sides are not straight. When you finish attaching a row, you may look at your square or rectangle quilt and realize the edges of your fabric are not completely straight. I’m talking there is a bit of wave to your raw edge. Solution: There are two solutions to this and they are both very basic quilting rules. Please don’t wince at the words “quilting rules” ( I may have). I really don’t like strict rules about quilting because it takes some of the fun and creativity out of quilting. However, these rules are important when sewing a medallion quilt. First, diligently pay attention to your seam allowance and pin. Sewing a border that is 60″ long or longer onto your quilt can be difficult. Have your strip pinned and have a plan for following seam allowances for a long duration. This may mean special tape on your machine or, if you are fancy, using a laser to track your seam allowance. I know this is a very basic rule, but it is often forgotten.
Second, pressing is really, really important here. Pressing a seam means you are PRESSING the seam, not ironing. I am guilty of ironing all too often. What I found is that I have a natural tendency to press the seam on the back, flip my quilt, and press on the top followed by pushing my iron outward from the seam toward the edge. I knew I should not do this, yet I kept making this mistake. Moving the iron outward instead of pressing caused a ruffled edge of my quilt after each row. For example, there may be a spot that stuck out 1/4 or 1/8 inch beyond where it should. The seam between the two borders would also be wavy instead of straight. This honestly was the biggest problem I ran into. Now, again, I know you are saying in your head, “well, duh”. However, it is easy to make these mistakes. I often break both of these rules with no consequence, but I had to stop making these on the Cultivate quilt.
Problem 2: My sides are not the length they should be. Solution: This may happen because of mistakes from problem 1, and we already talked about fixing those. However, you may still find yourself in this situation and need a fix. It could be that your quilt is still a square or rectangle with no funky sides but not the correct size it should be. Or it could be that just one side is off. The first way to fix this is to measure as best you can after adding each section of rows. When you add a row, you will add it to all 4 sides, so measure after all 4 to ensure you are staying on target for size. The Cultivate pattern frequently gives the dimensions after a step to help you measure your quilt. This way you can catch the problem before it becomes a much bigger problem.
If your quilt is off from the size it should be after measuring, you can fix this. There are two options – trim it down or increase the width of your next section with blank space. You will want to trim down the quilt if it is a size that is larger than it should be. This is fairly easy because you are usually only trimming a fraction of an inch. Keep in mind that if your quilt should be measuring 40″ x 40″ for example, and it is 41″ x 41″, you will want to decrease the size equally around the quilt. In this example, you would need to trim 1″. You would take 1/2″ from each side to make it even. Now a bit more tricky is adding extra. Let’s say your quilt measured 39.5″ x 39.5″ instead of 40″ x 40″. In the next row, you will want to make up that 1/2 inch to stay on track. This means you will increase the width of your next row by 1/4 inch. Preferably you can do this with blank space (the area that does not hold the design). In the Cultivate quilt, this is feasible for almost every row which makes it very simple to fix mistakes.
Problem 3: I hate sewing these long rows. Solution: First off, I hear ya. Long rows can be frustrating. However, I find it very motivating to see the quilt change with each and every step instead of waiting for the reward at the end. To alleviate this problem, first, I pinned way more than is common for me on this quilt. Pinning the long sides made it more manageable. Second, when possible, I combined several rows together to avoid sewing them all separately onto the quilt. The final section of the Cultivate quilt is a row of nine patch pluses with black space on both sides of this row. The corners have a sawtooth star. Because of these corner stars, I was able to sew three rows (and my longest rows) together before adding them to the quilt. Tricks like this in a medallion quilt can really help once you get to the longest sides.
Modifying the Cultivate Quilt Pattern
Lastly, I want to point out that a medallion quilt is a great opportunity to pick and choose what you like about a quilt and skip the rest. In my first Cultivate quilt pattern, I made a bed-sized quilt incorporating every row. In my second version (the Ruby Star version), I decided to mix things up a bit. The final row in the large throw is generally the small diamonds and triangles made of scraps. However, I wanted to skip this row and use the nine patch pluses. You can do this too, or any other variation. To do this, I figured out what size my quilt would be before the nine patches (it’s listed in the pattern). Next, I looked at how long the row of nine patches is and found the difference. To eliminate the difference, I decided how many nine patches to remove per side. Once I removed these and subtracted their size from the row, I was left with a row a bit shorter than what I needed. I simply added this amount to the row in equal proportions on top and bottom in background fabric, or blank space. Because there is plenty of blank space in this pattern, this is almost always possible! What sections would you like to remove or repeat or move to a different section? It may seem intimidating to alter a pattern like this, but I know you can do it!
Are these tips helpful for you? If you still have questions when sewing your Cultivate quilt, you can always leave a message below or email me! I can’t wait to see what you create.
More Cultivate Quilt Pictures
