Welcome to our new Row of the Month quilt along! This year’s wonderfully scrappy row quilt, designed by Irene Philp from Mill Creek Quilting, is hard to resist. It is a terrific opportunity to use many of your lovely scraps – variety is the name of the game. Go totally scrappy or pick a theme – Civil War, modern, solids, batiks, florals, children’s prints, shot cottons or 1930s retro prints. The choice is yours.
As the name suggests, each month we will work on a row using a new quilt block – Friendship Stars, Trees, Courthouse Steps, etc. And, each month you will have the opportunity to use different a technique (piecing, paper piecing, and appliqué).
Fabric Requirements
For this project you will want to have 12 to 15 fat quarters of a variety of light, medium and dark fabrics in your desired fabric theme. If you do not have fat quarters, yardage will work as well, in 1/4-meter cuts. You will also want between 2 and 2.5 meters of background fabric, solid or pieced. This requirement addresses the eight rows only and is a generous estimate. More specific fabric requirements will be provided with each row’s cutting instructions, but this is the overall plan.
The total amount of fabric needed for the project will depend upon how your rows will be put together and how your quilt is finished. The pattern will give suggestions for finishing the quilt however, this is where your creativity will influence it.
Download the instructions for Friendship Stars, the first of nine installments. Going forward, additional installments with step-by-step instructions and full-colour diagrams in a PDF format will be posted here on the blog the second Wednesday of the month.
Our thanks to Sue Sherman for suggesting this project. It is a pattern that her guild and several guilds in her area enjoyed making and she share the idea with us. Her finished quilt is below and will give you an idea of the quilt that you will make. Note that for two rows she substituted blocks of her own choosing and added the colourful Prairie Point border to give it a personal touch.
Questions? Please email Director at Large, Irene Lafleche (directoratlarge@canadianquilter.com).
