Banyan Batiks Shadows: a great background fabric for a modern quilt

Hello and welcome back! Here we are on day 4 of this week’s project. I hope you didn’t find working on the bias too hazardous, and that you were careful with your bias edges. We finished the day by pressing and squaring off our awesome blocks, let’s piece all of our blocks together and start quilting! 

As I was getting ready for today and cutting the background fabric, I was admiring it. It was a great choice. It’s light enough that it makes a subtle background color, allowing the other colors to stand out and shine. This background batik has enough pattern to give it some interest without overtaking the space.  

I look forward to finishing this modern quilt that showcases Northcott’s Banyan Batiks fabric collections.

Over the past 2 days we’ve sewed 4 log cabin blocks then halved them by cutting each block diagonally. Then we sewed each of the log cabin block halves to a piece of background fabric to make 8 blocks in total.

Now, we’ll take all of the pieces of the Shadows collection fabric that we cut earlier this week and join them to all of the blocks.  

I’ve been playing with the blocks’ placement on my design wall and was pleasantly surprised when I saw the overall effect. Design walls are so useful; they allow us to instantly see what’s really going on with our design concept. You’ll instantly see if the elements gel, where some need to be changed around, and what is or isn’t working.

I was expecting a bolder, brighter look to this quilt, but find that I really like its calm, appeasing look. It will have many aspects that a modern quilt should have such as:

• no border
• lots of negative space
• linear quilting

Once you find a block placement you like, you can sew the rest of the background fabric pieces into rows as follows:

After the rows are sewed, sew the rows together.

With the quilt top completed, it’s now quilting time!

We need 3½ yards of fabric for the backing and package of double size batting.

For this quilt, I’m using Fairfield Low-Loft Quilt Batting – Double – 81″ x 96″. This is a Poly-Fil Low-Loft quilt batting. The batting will retain its loft wash after wash and dries quickly. Something else I enjoy about this batting is that because it’s lightweight it’s ideal when you don’t want to add much additional weight to your project. This is true when making a baby quilt or when your quilt top is already large and heavy.

Fairfield battings are also available in the following sizes:

• Crib – 45” x 60”
• Double – 81″ x 96”
• Queen – 90” x 108”
• King – 120” x 120”

Since this quilt measures 60½” X 75” before quilting, I decided that I’d go ahead and quilt it on my own domestic sewing machine.

Another aspect I like about modern quilting is the quilting itself. I love the use of straight lines, curves or even geometric designs for the quilting.

I’ll quilt in straight lines, ½” apart using a thread that will blend nicely with the background fabric.

While you finish your quilt top, prepare the backing and baste your quilt. Here’s a photo to tease you along and show how the straight-line quilting will look.

Come on back tomorrow for the grand finale and see how all these fabrics from the Northcott Banyan Batiks collections will look once the quilt has done its magic!