A Technical Editor's Take on The Modern Medallion Workbook

A Technical Editor's Take on The Modern Medallion Workbook

Posted by Alison Schmidt on Jun 24th 2015

Hi, I’m Alison Schmidt, and I am the technical editor on the book  The Modern Medallion Workbook - 11 Designers Share Quilt Projects to Make, Mix & Match by Janice Zeller Ryan and Beth Vassalo.


If you’re not familiar with what a technical editor does, you can read about it  here.

One of the neat things about working at C&T Publishing is that we get to choose our own assignments.

I specifically asked to work on Beth and Janice’s book because I worked on the book that sparked the current medallion craze,  Liberty Love by Alexia Abegg, with her quilt the Marcelle Medallion.

However, I had an ulterior motive in my request. Janice and I go way back–before we were quilters, we were costumers working in Hollywood. Watching Janice grow as a blogger, designer, and teacher has been a great part of our friendship.

The friendships she’s developed through quilting and blogging lead her to Beth, who lives all the way across the country, and to the rest of the contributors in this book, like our friends and bloggers at  LatifahThe Quilt Engineer, Melissa of We Shall Sew, Alexia of Cotton and Steel Fabrics, and Green Bee Design and Patterns. Seeing these friendships develop is one of the greatest parts of the online modern quilting community. And getting to know so many talented quilters who write books for C&T is another perk of the job.

But back to the book, which is what you really want to know about!

If you follow Janice’s blog,  Better Off Thread, you know she loves flying geese, like in this quilt, ‘Spiral Geese Mini.’

Photo credit: Photo by Janice Zeller Ryan.

Janice brought her love of flying geese front and center in the quilt ‘The Migration Medallion.’ 



Beth’s love of improvisational piecing and sweet, soft color palettes led to the project quilt ‘The June Medallion’... 

...and a smaller quilt featured in the book’s section on designing your own unique medallion quilt. 


Not only does the book provide the instructions to make eleven amazing medallion quilts, but there are innumerable other options you could make by resizing or removing blocks or borders, and lot of other sample layouts to spark your creative ideas, in the chapter "Make It Yours: Designing a Unique Modern Medallion Quilt." I hope you are inspired to make this book yours! The Modern Medallion Workbook is available for order now on our website. Also look for it in shops near you!

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