Busy City - Row by Row blog hop (plus giveaway!)

Welcome to my stop on Island Batik's Row by Row blog hop!  Our challenge was to create a row by row quilt, with the following prompt: Row by Row quilts are quilts made up of rows of quilt blocks or components with each row distinct from the others. The Row by Row quilt can be any theme, any combination of blocks, and can include appliqué. I was sent the collection Citified, designed by Kathy Engle for Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting. Citified is a beautiful mix of oranges, blues, purples, and whites.

 

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Schmetz, Hobbs, &Aurifil,

 

I was inspired by the name Citified to make a city. The first row I thought about was a construction site. Every growing city has lots of construction! I knew the wide variety of oranges would be perfect for construction trucks. I used printable coloring sheets to get the basic shapes I wanted. I have a Crayola light-up pad that I use whenever I need to trace anything and it was really helpful! I can't trace or cut a circle to save my life, but luckily my Accuquilt train die has circles; I used those for the wheels of my construction equipment.

 

Cities also have traffic, so I made a row of cars! I got the Cute Car die for Christmas (Thanks Mom!) and this was a perfect time to use it! I love this die and know I will use it lots in the future.

Of course, people live in the city, so I needed some houses. There are lots of house patterns out there. I used the Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial for Jenny Lane, but only made enough houses for one row. This was my only pieced row; the others are all applique.

A peek into the process

Those first three ideas for rows came pretty quickly, but then I wasn't sure what else to add. After thinking about different options, I decided my city really needed a park!  There was a really great light blue with dots that would make a fabulous pond, and I could put fish in the pond. And of course the park needed trees and a playground. I kept thinking of things I could add, like kites and dogs. I traced or free-handed most of the park elements, though the trees were cut with my Accuquilt. 

 

Pond with fish

Every park needs a playground!

Doggies!

 

The sashing is my absolute favorite part of this!  I knew a city would need roads.  I also assumed this would be a kid's quilt, so roads would make it a perfect play quilt.  I used my son's Matchbox cars to decide the width of the roads!  I saved one of the orange fabrics from the collection, Cheerios in Cantaloupe, for the dashed line in the road and paired it with the dark gray solid.

I'm told that the top row is experiencing rush hour (not a traffic jam)

I named this Busy City, inspired by Richard Scarry's Busytown.  We read a lot of Richard Scarry books and a family favorite is Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.  In that book, Goldbug, a small yellow bug, is hiding on each page for readers to find.  In a further homage to Richard Scarry, I added Goldbug to each row.  Can you find him??

All twenty fabrics from Citified are in Busy City, plus several of the the always-available Foundations fabrics.  The background is Sky, Goldbug is Mustard, there are trees of Chameleon and Pine Needles, Large Netting in Sand for the dirt piles at the construction site, and there are wheels of both solid gray and black on the various vehicles.

Busy City measures 45" x 48".  With so many different fabrics in the applique rows, I used a lot of different Aurifil threads!  I count twelve different colors, not including the 2615 Aluminum used for piecing and 2770 Very Light Delft used for the quilting.  Schmetz super nonstick needles are fabulous when I've used fusible web, which I did for all of this, because they slide right through the fabric and do not get gummy at all. The batting is Hobbs bleached 80/20.

Regular readers will not at all be surprised to learn that Fire Monkey, my 8-year-old son, has claimed this quilt.  He frequently plays with his cars & trucks after bed time as a way of quieting himself down for sleep, so Busy City will get lots of use!

To celebrate the Row by Row hop, I am hosting a giveaway.  I have three Stash Builder Rolls to give away.  Each roll has four strips of 5" by WOF beautiful Island Batik fabric.  That's a total of 1 2/3 yards of fabric! Leave me a comment to enter.  Comments can be anything, but if you need a prompt, tell me what in your city or town you would add to Busy City.  Entries accepted through the end of the day February 24th.  Additionally, Island Batik has a giveaway each week of the hop, check out their blog for the most recent, and check back each Friday for the new one.  

 
Be sure to check out Quilted Delights today to see what my fellow ambassador Leah made with Citified! And you can find the full hop schedule on this post.