Row by Row Blog Hop - Back Country and Colorado Memories

 I am so excited to share my quilt with you today!  As you could tell from my unboxing video, this collection really spoke to me from my first look at it.  One of the perks of being an Island Batik Ambassador is being provided with everything we need for the challenges - Island Batik, Aurifil Thread, Hobbs Batting and Schmetz Needles sent all the supplies I needed for this challenge!

Yes, I did go a little crazy and ended up making a quilt with twelve rows of ten 6 inch blocks!  But you know what I decided?  I really like piecing.  I love feeding strings of half square triangles and flying geese through the sewing machine while I enjoy a movie or Agatha Christie Mystery on my iPad.  So, if I make a quilt with a bazillion pieces, well that just gives me that much more time to do what I love doing, so it's all good!

First let me tell you about the fabric!  This line is Back Country and it was designed by Kari Nichols of Quilting Renditions.  As I had speculated in the video, she is from Colorado - and this line definitely has that feel to me!  It's a large line with 30 different pieces in a range of beautiful blues, plums, browns and golds.  The designs feature aspen leaves, aspen bark, pine trees and cones, animal tracks and flowers.  These should be shipping to your quilt shop any time now, so keep your eye out! Here is a look at all them:

I should explain my deep connection with this collection - I was born and grew up in Colorado, so the state is definitely dear to my heart, and my memories of the sights and smells of my childhood are definitely tied up in this line of fabric.  I had fun reminiscing and thinking about the mountains and woods of Colorado while I pieced.  Memories of hot summer days at camp, hiking and swimming and sleeping in a big tent. Autumn leaves, winter snow and spring flowers.  That's a lot of inspiration!

So - the challenge was to make a quilt featuring rows of blocks. I decided I wanted to make 12 rows, but wanted a lap quilt, so that meant 6 inches was my limit for block size.  Ten blocks in a row, makes the quilt 60 x 72.  Off I went to EQ to find the different blocks I wanted for my rows. 

Since I wanted 6 inch blocks, I tried to keep them fairly simple with basic piecing.  Aurifil 50 weight thread and a size 10 needle for nice tight seams, and I was on my way!

So much fun! I used the Porcelain (part of the Naturally Neutrals collection) that I was sent in my Ambassador box as the background, and it was the perfect color for this project!  10 more rows to go, and I was on my game - I would spend a couple hours a day making blocks, then prepping the next row.

It was so much fun seeing the rows all come together, each row used different fabrics, I think there are only a couple of fabrics that I used more than once.

One of my favorites was this block!  Those tracks in blue on deep navy is one of my favorite fabrics!

Ready to sew the rows all together!  I was super excited to see how they would look!

Yes, just as pretty as I hoped!  Full of color and movement and lots of piecing - perfection!

The next task?  Create a back, and what better way to enjoy all of these beautiful fabrics than to piece more of them into a backing.  This kind of piecing isn't quite as fun, but I love the results - now I can turn the quilt over and remember every piece of fabric in my quilt!

What better batting for a cozy lap quilt than Hobbs wool?  If you've never used it, it is absolutely the softest, lightest batting!  So warm and cozy, and the loft is wonderful!

I received some nice brown 40 wt thread from Aurifil in a Color Builder collection and decided it would be perfect for this quilt.  I thought a simple grid would make this quilt soft and cozy, so put on my walking foot and changed out my Schmetz needle for a size 12 and started quilting!  I did find out that when quilting the wool batting like this, I need to baste a little closer.  I started out with some puckering issues, but was able to adjust and got it under control!  I really love the texture of the stitching.

I found a pretty blue in my foundations bundle (Sapphire in the Brilliant Blues) for the binding - perfect finish!  

This is where my quilt will live - in my living room to keep me nice and cozy in the chilly evenings and mornings.  As a matter of fact I am snuggling under it right now while I write this post!  Everything about this quilt makes me smile - it's been a while since I made myself a lap quilt so I am going to enjoy this one for sure.

Twelve beautiful rows in my quilt, lightweight and warm Hobbs batting,  Hours of piecing pleasure, feeding triangles and squares through my sewing machine.  I am one happy quilter with the results!

I'd like to make another quilter happy with my leftovers!  There are some strips and pieces, plus some extra pieces and mis-cuts that could be put to good use.  Sorry, I can only ship this to the US because of shipping, but I would be happy to send an international winner their choice of a pdf pattern.  Enter via the rafflecopter widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

One more shoutout to the wonderful companies that made this quilt possible!  Oh, and make sure you visit Andi Stanfield at True Blue Quilts to see what she did with these wonderful fabrics!  Go have some fun and do something you love today!