Mediterranean Tiles

My quilt Mediterranean Tiles is in the new issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting (Vol 22 No 12).

I originally designed it for my second niece (almost 5 years ago!) before deciding to make her a beach scene like her big sister - you can see I had beach colours in mind even in this quilt! While I liked the design too much to abandon it, I didn't have occasion to push it up my priority list until it was commissioned.

As an aside, I find it impossible to type the word Mediterranean without spelling it out in my head as though saying it, even though my fingers type it automatically. My primary school principal was excellent, and among other things, he used to pop into our classrooms at random and teach us something quick (I think he missed the teaching part of the job). On one occasion he taught us to spell Mediterranean and came back some time (days?) later to quiz us. I bet he never anticipated just how well it would stick in my mind!

Anyway, most of this quilt is made from easy half-square triangles., but the centre block is a bit of a challenge. Not hard, just a bit fiddly. The centre star is sewn without sewing through the seam allowance at  the centre, which allows the seam allowances to naturally fan out, which distributes the bulk of eight pieces meeting far better.

And then there are the set-in seams to add the squares around the star, and the inner ring of diamonds. I promise they're not hard; just follow the steps carefully. One thing which helps is knowing that there's only one fiddly block, then the rest can be chain-pieced, even if there are a lot of HSTs. Honestly, I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every time someone commented on my patience - yet I'm really most horribly impatient!

I made the decision to custom quilt this one. While it doesn't always show up well, I didn't want to detract from the piecing with an allover.

The quilting has a bit of everything; continuous formal swirls (and a some continuous curves) in the centre block, and the larger triangles are filled with feathers on a single side of an arc.

A couple of borders have overlapping arcs, which were marked, but free-motion quilted without a ruler

And I filled some of the background spaces (around the Friendship Stars, below, and in the small pale triangles of the Birds in the Air blocks) with a small stipple.

I used quite a variety of fabrics; the outer border print is an old one by Michele d'Amore, there's some pale Stonehenge, a couple of unknown tone-on-tones, plus prints from three different Tula Pink collections (Neptune, Prince Charming and Salt Water).