A medallion quilt pattern inspired by simple, classic designs with a modern look.
The Design
I designed the Cultivate quilt pattern in the fall of 2020. All in the span of a couple weeks, I designed this quilt and three other of my recent designs. This was my first couple of weeks of having childcare again since the world shut down from Covid. Those few extra hours I got each week gave my mind some much-needed free time, and I was able to create several of my favorite designs.
I wanted this design to look great on a bed, be timeless, yet fun and modern. I knew a medallion quilt met all of that criteria, but I let this design sit for over a year. Every time I opened it up, I would decide something that was just not right. At last, I decided I wanted this medallion quilt to only include sewing techniques that are fairly simple. There are no curves and matching points and corners happen haphazardly. In this way, the Cultivate quilt pattern honors a simple journey in quilting.
Cultivate
Cultivate means to try and develop a skill. This quilt is a culmination of the skills I’ve developed that are simple, yet interesting – sawtooth stars, scrappiness, natural dye, diamonds, nine patches. Years ago, these things seemed impossible to me. Yet, they come together simply and effortlessly now.
Cultivate also means to prepare and use land for crops. Once one cultivates the land, they can reap the benefits of the harvest. I like how this fits with developing the skill of quilting. The more I allow myself to learn and grow as a quilter, the more I can explore in quilting. And sometimes, I think the reward is just having the time to quietly create a quilt that someone will cherish and love.
The Cover Quilt
The cover quilt is made with many of my favorite fabrics. The background is a woven from Diamond Textiles called Venus Teal. The rest of the fabrics are a mix of wovens from Diamond Textiles and hand-dyed fabrics. The hand-dyed fabrics span years of work in natural dyeing by me. There are well over ten different colors I created with natural dyes.
Since many of my hand-dyed fabrics are smaller pieces, I designed aspects of this quilt to allow for a large variety of small fabrics. If you are an avid quilter, you likely have enough leftover pieces of fabrics, or scraps, to cover all of the fabrics in this quilt except for the background. Grab yourself a striking background, and get started on this medallion quilt.
Starting with the small baby size (shown below), the Cultivate quilt grows as you add rows around and around. You can decide at what point to stop or to sew all the way to the full size.
