A Medallion Quilt with Forever Neverland

Hello fellow makers! It’s Sara from Rose Hill Quilts. I’m so excited to be back on the RBD blog to peek into my latest quilt, featuring the magical Forever Neverland collection by Jill Howarth. This range is pure joy: the colours, characters, and whimsical energy are irresistible.

Working with Panels: A Flexible Approach

If you’ve followed my previous panel projects (like the Twilight Creatures quilt I wrote about here, and my Flora No. 6 here), you’ll know I love approaching panels in different ways. Sometimes I lean into strong, traditional borders for a framed look. Other times, I like to blur the lines with a medallion style that lets the colour and motifs in each border melt into each other.

Design Decisions: Letting the Panel Lead

With Forever Neverland, I opted for a soft, colour-blended medallion layout, without strong borders. The panel itself is long and skinny, so I decided to make the sides wider and keep the flow of the artwork by extending the colours out into the borders. To do this, I followed the natural gradient of the panel, which moves beautifully from cool teals and turquoises at the bottom, through sky pinks and finally leafy greens at the top.

I built the entire border around a base block size of 3 inches (or multiples of 3), which helped keep everything cohesive: flying geese blocks at 3″ x 6″, New York Beauties at 12″, and half-square triangles at 3″. That math kept things tidy while still giving me freedom to play. For the top border, which measured 48 inches across the top, I moved to a base block size of 2 or 4 inches.

Each type of block was chosen to match the theme and tone of the panel:

• Flying geese echo the jagged shapes of mountains.
• Snowballed rectangles suggest tumbling jungle leaves.
• At the bottom, wave-like piecing ties into the watery scenes of mermaids, pirates, and crocodiles.

The trickiest section was definitely the transition from jungle into sky. The print at the top of the panel is so lush with hanging vines and leaves, and I wanted a gentle move into the sky without it feeling jarring. The collection includes beautiful celestial prints with stars and moons, which I really wanted to include. I leaned into citron tones for star blocks and added flying geese in a trail pattern that hints at a shooting star.

Supporting Colours: RBD Basics & a Perfect Pop of Peony

Fabric-wise, I used a mix of Forever Neverland prints and coordinated RBD basics pulled from the storyboard. I also snuck in the Blossom basic in the colour Peony because it matched the pink jungle flowers. This colour helped pop against the softer pinks in the collection. It brought a bit of contrast and punch that tied everything together.

A Fresh Take on Neverland

And yes, for those of you who still have Jill Howarth’s original Neverland collection in your stash, the two collections blend beautifully. This new one feels like a fresher, slightly more modern take on the theme, with updated colours that still nod to the original.

Play with Panels!

I always encourage people to play with panels. They make such a perfect centrepiece for medallion quilts, and there are many ways to make them your own. Whether you’re a planner or a go-with-the-flow quilter, you can take inspiration from the colours, movement, or motifs in the panel. Then you just have to build outwards in whatever way feels good. It’s such a satisfying, freeing process.

Thanks so much for following along with this quilt! I hope it inspires you to cut into a panel you’ve been saving and try building your own medallion magic.

Happy stitching! ✨ Sara Fernandez, Rose Hill Quilts