New Year's Resolution - Row by Row Quilt

When doing the Row by Row Experience shop hop last summer, I knew I was not going to be able to work on this quilt until well after the contest, so I stuck my patterns, license plates and fabric collected into one of the cubbies in my sewing room. Since those cubbies are the focus of my New Year's resolution (see previous blog post), I pulled it out this week to start on it.

Technically, it is a UFO because I started to embroider a row that would use three of the license plates I collected. When I found license plates that said 'fabric-holic' and 'quilt-a-holic' I knew I had to make them into a row by themselves since my husband has accused me of being a little OCD about quilting, lol. The 'fabricologist' license plate will complete the trifecta and the row will eventually say "My Hubby Says I'm A Fabric-holic & A Quilt-a-holic, But I'm Really A Fabricologist".

Last summer, I also began drawing out a large applique pattern that I wanted to include in my Row by Row quilt that would commemorate the road trips I took with the hubby and quilting friends to participate in the shop hop. So this week, I started with the applique as I began designing the layout of my quilt. My quilt will feature a flower theme, so will be using only patterns I collected that have flowers in them. I will be combining two sets of patterns in a row to create a 72" wide quilt. There will also be rows of license plates throughout the quilt. I haven't decided on borders yet, that'll come later.

I love the look of applique and what you can create. So I was anxious to get started on the large applique block that I had designed. I haven't done a lot of raw edge applique, so this was new to me but maybe not to most appliquers - I used Steam-A-Seam 2 fusible web this time and I loved it! After it is fused onto your applique piece, you peel the paper backing off and the fusible is tacky so you can place it on your foundation and it will hold until you iron it. It's repositionable so as I was layering my pieces on, I could move things around until I liked it and then it held in place. Once everything was where I wanted it, I ironed the whole thing in one unit. Then it was off to the sewing machine to sew it all down....

The finished block is 27" x 18". I'm really happy with the way it turned out! I think I will have everyone that went on one of my Row by Row shop hop trips sign the car so it'll be a reminder of all the fun I had and who I had it with!

Now to start on the rows....

~Sharla