Pick Your Fabrics for the Machine Quilting Party

It’s that time of the year again – time to buy fabric! The new Machine Quilting Party will begin on January 1st and we’re going to start the year with a bang making two quilts: Rainbow Log Cabin and Marvelous Mosaic. Check out these two quilts and find tips on picking your fabrics in this new video:

Click Here to find the schedule and materials list for the quilts we’re making together.

Remember, to follow along with this Machine Quilting Party, all you need is a copy of the book Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day. 

Yes, we have a ebook version of this book too!

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about extra fees and charges, but just like all of my quilt alongs in the past, all you need to do is purchase the book of patterns and the videos will be shared for free.

Selecting fabrics for the Rainbow Log Cabin Quilt

The Rainbow Log Cabin is the oldest quilt in the book. I designed it in 2008 and struggled to decide on the quilting design. This quilt remained simply stitched in the ditch between the quilt blocks until last year when we finally decided to quilt it for this book.

When selecting the fabrics for this quilt, I went to a local fabric store and picked the brightest, most cheerful prints I could find. To create the widest variety, I selected multiple fat quarters for each fabric color.

What is a fat quarter? Fat quarters are 1/4 yard cuts of fabric, but instead of 9 x 42 inches, the usual way fabric is cut across the selvages, it’s cut differently. Quilt shops will cut a 1/2 yard of fabric first, then slice it in half to create an 18 x 21 inch rectangle. It’s also a quarter yard of fabric, but cut “fat” so there’s more usable fabric for quilting.

So if you’re looking for a great way to use up lots of fat quarters and you like this mosaic effect of lots of different fabric prints and blenders, this will be a great choice for you!

If you’re looking for a faster and simpler way to buy fabric, consider buying yardage in the seven colors needed for this quilt. This is the option I took for making my new Rainbow Log Cabin quilt for 2018. I tend to get obsessive about the same fabrics being next to one another. Rather than spend a day arguing with the fabric arrangement, I just went with seven colors of beautiful Island Batik blenders:

I also used a giant piece of 108″ wide backing fabric for the back so I wouldn’t have to piece the backing together. Call me lazy! I just didn’t feel like messing with it on this project.

Picking Colors for Marvelous Mosaic

The fabrics in the Marvelous Mosaic Quilt can also be a scrappy mix of fat quarters or cut from yardage. For the quilt version in the book, I used cheerful fat quarters for the front and several yards of Kona Cotton Ocean for the back. This creates an awesome two-sided quilt effect!

But you could mix it up even more and use fat quarters for the front and back, you could use one color for both sides, really it’s entirely up to you.

I decided to change things up for the Marvelous Mosaic Quilt I’m making in 2018. I’m using solid fat quarters for the right side of the quilt, but minky squares in red and black for the back to create a dynamic checkerboard effect.

Minky is a very different fabric to work with and I shared some tips on quilting with it here.

Before cutting the minky fabric, I stabilized it with French Fuse, then cut it into squares. It feels very different to quilt with this fabric on the back of the quilt. It likes to really STICK to the sewing machine and table so I increase my stitch length from 1.5 mm (my usual walking foot quilting stitch length) to 2.5 mm.

So please only take a minky backing fabric on if you’re wanting a bit of a challenge. I handed my former full-time piecer employee two squares to quilt when I was in a hurry this summer and… well… we had to cut more fabric later that day!

I love it because it’s so soft and cuddly, but I can’t deny just how much it can change the feel of quilting even a medium sized square on your home machine.

So I hope you’ll pull from your fabric stash for these quilts. All of the quilts for 2018 are fat quarter friendly so you’ll be able to use up dozens of fat quarters with these quilts!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day