Five rounds, thirteen templates, one quilt.
Huntington is a free medallion quilt pattern from Robert Kaufman that finishes at 85 by 85 inches. It starts with a curved flower in the middle and builds outward in frames: a strip pieced border, four paper pieced corner blocks, a seven strip border, four more corner blocks, and a final row of diamonds. The cover grades it Advanced Expert, with the line "My skills are sharp, so I'm ready to take on the hard stuff."
That grading is earned. In one quilt you sew curved seams, foundation paper piecing, half square triangles, template pieces with reverses, strip sets and offset seams. None of them is rare on its own. Having all six in the same top, and needing every round to land at the right size for the next one, is what makes it a project for someone who already trusts her quarter inch.
It was designed by Robert Kaufman Fabrics and published on robertkaufman.com in 2016, and it features the Grand Majolica collection, purples, teals, aqua and navy with a large floral, set off by an ivory and a white.
Pattern details
- Pattern name: Huntington
- Designer: Robert Kaufman Fabrics
- Finished size: 85" x 85"
- Size category: Full
- Difficulty: Advanced Expert
- Block: Medallion. A center of four curved blocks, then an inner border with four Block A corners, a middle border with four Block B corners, and an outer border of diamonds
- Technique: Curved piecing, foundation paper piecing, templates, half square triangles, strip piecing, offset seams
- Fabric: Grand Majolica, thirteen fabrics
- Price: Free to download
Download the free Huntington quilt pattern PDF from Robert Kaufman
Fifteen pages: fabric list, cutting, assembly for every round, and six pages of full size templates.
How a medallion quilt goes together
A medallion quilt has one focal point in the center and borders that frame it, each one drawing the eye a little farther out. Huntington follows that idea round by round, and the order you sew in is the order you see it.
The center is four blocks, each a fan of curved pieces (Templates 2 to 5) with a pointed petal on either side (Template 1). Turned to face each other, the four petals meet as a flower. The pattern's tip for the curves is worth repeating: fold and crease each curve at its center to help you pin, and shorten your stitch length.
Around the center goes the inner border, five strips sewn into a set, with Block A at each corner. Block A is a framed square turned on point with paper pieced triangles around it, from Templates 6 and 7.
Then the middle border, seven strips, with Block B at each corner: four half square triangles in the middle, framed by long triangles cut from Templates 8 and 9.
Last, the outer border is a row of diamonds and triangles from Templates 10 to 13, with a plain square at each corner.
Three things to know before you cut
Print the templates at actual size. Every template page has a 1 inch box for scale. Measure it before you cut anything. If the box does not measure exactly 1 inch, the page was scaled when it printed, and every template on it is the wrong size.
Template 7 comes in two halves. It is too big for one page, so you match the left half to the right half along the red line, line up the red arrows, and tape them without covering the black lines. You need eight.
Measure the center before each border goes on. We add up every round of a pattern before we publish it. The border strips here are cut to fit a center of 19 1/2 inches finished, and with the stated widths the quilt comes to 84 1/2 inches square; the cover rounds it to 85. That is close enough not to matter for the finished size. It does matter for the borders: if your center comes out even a little off, the 20 inch and 44 inch strip sets will not meet the corner blocks. Measure across the middle of the quilt, compare it with the strip set, and fix the difference before you sew the round on, not after.
The outer border needs offset seams
The diamonds and triangles in the last round meet at acute angles, and pieces like that do not line up edge to edge. The pattern says to offset the template pieces and the rows so the seams match where the quarter inch seam allowance is, and its diagram on page 8 shows the overhang. The point of the offset is that the straight edges line up at the stitching line, a quarter inch in from the raw edge, not at the tips.
If you have not done that before, sew a short test row of four pieces first. It costs ten minutes and saves the border.
If one of the techniques is new to you
Huntington is not the place to learn six techniques at once. If any of them is new, try it on a small project before you cut into the Majolica floral.
For the corner blocks, our complete guide to foundation paper piecing covers the templates, the cutting and the sewing order. For the center, how to sew curves walks through pinning and easing a curved seam. And for Block B, our guide to half square triangle methods includes the two at a time method the pattern uses, with a size chart.
The same collection shows up in our Grand Gardens pattern, eight point stars with set-in seams, which is another good way to see what Grand Majolica does.
There are more of these in our free quilt patterns, and most of them take a good deal less than five rounds.
