Websterquilt: Island Batik Ambassador's Row by Row Blog Hop

Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Island Batik Ambassador's Row by Row Blog Hop

Row by Row quilts. If I'm being honest, they've never been my favorite. I am a symmetrical girl. I love all things symmetry. Sometimes I go outside this box, but honestly, not often. So understandably Row by Row quilts have never appealed to me.

In thinking outside the box, I started thinking about traditional Navajo blankets. I even drafted a lovely quilt on this idea on graph paper as I could not quite get Electric Quilt 8 to play nicely with me the way I wanted it to. However, when I started thinking about my fabrics they just didn't jive with a Navajo blanket.

So I went back to the drawing board with the goal of making my Row by Row more modern. I also decided that the top and bottom would be the same....symmetrical.

I drew out this quilt on graph paper and fell in love with it. I also decided to do a gradation from warm in the center to cool on the outside edges. With 16 different fabrics it was quite a trick to keep it all straight and to cut the right pieces from the right fabric!

I also designed this quilt to be made with my AccuQuilt GO! 8 inch Qube. It always makes things easier and accurate to cut my pieces with my GO! Big cutter. This quilt was no exception. Despite being 72 inches wide, I had no trouble aligning the rows to each other and no trouble with certain rows being larger or smaller than others. It always amazes me, but it happens every time!

I've decided this quilt is called Modern Glow. It seems to fit.

The Island Batik Contempo Collection by Kathy Engle for Kate Colleran Designs is just gorgeous. I love the modern feel and the way the pink and red are both incorporated into the rainbow. I kept trying to add all the multicolor prints into this quilt, but with the rainbow effect going on they just didn't work. I have other thoughts about another project using them though. When I get time!

Planning and figuring out where each fabric belonged. It's one of my favorite parts of the process. And with a black background of Island Batik solid (swoon...so lovely to work with) I knew the colors would just pop. I of course then had to sew my quilt with black Aurifil thread and my favorite Schmetz Microtex needles.

Sewing units together! Always exciting.

Just keep sewing. Just keep sewing!

Such happy colors! They made me smile so much as I worked with them.

This "block" is so fun and modern. I love how different it is.

The rows are coming together! As are the Legos all over my house. Life with kids!

The center row had me stumped for a while. I had cut a bunch of half square triangles to use in some fashion. They did not work the way I had originally intended. So I ended up laying out a bunch of ideas until I was happy.

Modern Quilt. Modern Quilting. I chose six different background fillers. Then I made them HUGE and quilted them all over the black. It took about 10 hours to quilt, but I love the finished effect. I used oranges, rows of bread, curls, outlined circles, outlined rectangles, and pebbles with echoing. It was fun and used a TON of thread, but I couldn't be happier with the result. The texture is so yummy and shows so well on the black Island Batik solid. I used my favorite Hobbs 80/20 batting in this quilt, but I used the black version. So amazing to put black batting in a black quilt.