Square Dance in Shades Basics

Hello Riley Blake friends! It’s Melissa Corry, from Happy Quilting here to share a “Back to Basics” finish. I always love working with Basics because you have so many color options. And when Riley Blake recently released a whole new color lineup of Shades Basics I just knew it would make the perfect Square Dance Rainbow Quilt! I absolutely love making quilts with a rainbow of piecing. I mean, doesn’t that just make you smile to see all of those happy, bright colors all lined up. And really, it is so much fun to play with the endless color options you have for layout. I went with a diagonal rainbow, but you can do vertical, horizontal, exploding from the center, or even totally random, just have fun with it!!

The Square Dance Quilt uses 2 1/2″ strips, so I just used 1/8 yard of each of these 36 Shades Basics. And just because I would want to know . . . here are the 36 Shades Basics I used listed in their layout of rows.

Row 1 – Sugar Pink, Peony, Lipstick, Orange, Tangerine, Alpine,

Row 2 – Coral, Cayenne, Autumn, Marmalade, Lettuce, Sweet Mint,

Row 3 – Santa, Paprika, Sunshine, Green, Hint of Mint, Mermaids Tail,

Row 4 – Wagon Red, Honey, Basil, Songbird, Twilight, Nighttime,

Row 5 – Butterscotch, Treetop, Aqua, Celestial, Coastal Blue, Grape,

Row 6 – Mountain Green, Dark Teal, Light Teal, Cobalt, Lavender, Plum

And I have to say, I just love the names of colors that are given to these basics! So fun 😉 I used Shades Phantom for the accent and Shades Snow for the background. It is always great to pair black and white with the rainbow, it just makes all of the colors pop!

And while this might look a little complex, the Square Dance Quilt Pattern is truly is a beginner quilt with basic quilting techniques.   The block is super fun to make and super fast, and then you just use pieced sashing (that will totally nest on all the seams) to interlock the secondary squares. And you wind up with a super fun geometric quilt every time! This is the Queen Size quilt, but the pattern has multiple size options so you can make whatever size works for you.

And this was quilted with a gorgeous all over loop de loops in different scales and grouped in double loops. My amazing MIL, Barbara did the quilting on this and it is just beautiful. And I purposely shared this part of the quilting to show the bottom corner. Have you ever thought of labeling your quilts with the quilting? Such a fun way personalize your quilts!

And that is my Square Dance Quilt featuring the new Shades Basics! Have you made a Rainbow Quilt in Basics before? They really are such a joy to make, you can’t help but smile when you are playing with all of the colors! And if you haven’t made a Basics Rainbow Quilt, hopefully this will inspire you to do so 🙂 And if you happen to make a Square Dance Quilt, I would love to see it! You can share your projects with me on social media with the hashtags #happyquiltingmc and #squaredancequilt and tagging @happyquiltingmc and @rileyblakedesigns or email me a picture at happyquiltingmelissa@gmail.com. I can’t wait to see your Square Dance Quilts!!

Thank you so much for sharing this finish with me!! Piecing with Basics is always a joy and I especially love making large quilts with Basics so I can play with so many Shades of all the colors 😉 Thank you so much to my wonderful friends at Riley Blake for having me here to share with you all!!! 

I hope you have a very Happy Quilting Day!!!