Giant Panda Quilt

Like most years, my niece is planning a themed birthday party, this year the theme will be 'panda'. At almost 9 years old she had outgrown her previous little girl's bedroom and my sister recently refurbished and painted her room, using Dulux Waiwera and Oakura:

   

You know those conversations that start with "If you have nothing better to do..." so there is now the beginning of a Giant Panda quilt. I used the Giant Panda pattern from Animal Quilts by @tartankiwi, enlarged to 200% to give me a 40" square centre:

I place the background pretty much at random, but as I ended up with a noticeable green strip by Panda's ear, I'll think carefully what I will place into the blank areas top left.

Despite wrangling such large pieces, this is really lots of fun, and it goes together really easily - actually quite addictive. The one downside about enlarging the pieces is that you end up with needing large (aqua) triangles for the background and I'm using a variety of leftovers, FQs, charm squares etc. I have now decided I will divide some of the triangles and leave just some of them in the original size - allowing me to work with what I have got rather than travelling to my LQS 100km away or to any of the other fabric stores in Whangarei, the only larger town in Northland.

Once the Panda block is done, I plan to border it all around to give the quilt enough width to cover up the storage under my niece's bed. Suzanne recommended I look at some of the numerours popular medallion quilts all over Instagram, e.g. Aviatrix Medallion, or Marcelle Medallion for some ideas. The easiest would of course be to find some suitable material and just add 20+" around all sides, but four patches, pluses, or appliquéd melon shapes might be more realistic - keeping in mind I need this pieced before I get back to work so I can have it quilted, labeled and bound by her birthday mid February... Wish me luck!

Happy Sewing!