Island Batik Ambassador's Pieced to Perfection Blog Hop

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to create a foundation paper pieced or English paper pieced project.  I have a great love for New York Beauty blocks.  I also like to make 4 of them to make a complete circle.  

For my paper pieced project I received the gorgeous Ornate Gems collection by Kathy Engle for Heidi Pridemore of The Whimsical Workshop.  When I looked ta the patterns to the fabrics I knew I wanted to make a large New York Beauty to showcase the beautiful fabrics.

I designed a simple New York Beauty block in Electric Quilt 8, but it wouldn't let me print it as large as I wanted it.  What to do?  Make a smaller print and then take it to FedEx Office to increase the size on their large scale printer.  It was more expensive than I had anticipated, but made the job so much easier!

I then cut my pieces and started paper piecing.  Here is the middle ring all complete.

The next challenge was connecting the rings to each other.  The first thing I did was stitch along the edge of the ring with no thread in the machine to perforate the fabric and the paper.  Then I peeled back about an inch of the paper and was able to glue baste the circle's seam allowance down.  This was easy due to the perforation in the fabric.

Then I pinned the rings together and sewed a 1/8" topstitch around the edge of the circle to connect the rings.  Then there was a lot of paper ripping to do!

This project got so big I finally brought up an extra table to help me pin.

I then layered my quilt with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Poly Cotton batting and had fun quilting wavy lines radiating from the center of the quilt with Aurifil Thread and Schmetz Microtex Needles.

Here's a giveaway for some gorgeous fat quarter collections!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

See below for a list of stores who have Ornate Gems precuts available!

All About Quilts-MA MA

Bill's Sewing Machine Company NC

Calico Cat-HI HI

Cary Quilting Co-NC NC

Creekside Quilts-OR OR

Custom Stitchery-OR OR

Fat Tuesday Fabrics and Gifts LA

Hancocks of Paducah KY

Laural's Fabrics and More, LLC MN

Little Timber Quilts MT

Loose Threads-WI WI

My Favorite Quilt Store-TX TX

Pam's Fabric Nook FL

Prairie Point Quilt and Fabric Shop KS

Queen Bee Quilts WI

Quilter's Cove-OR OR

Sandy Creek Quilts WI

Texas Roots Quilting TX

The Jewel Box Fabric Shoppe KY

The Needle Workshop WI

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Check out all the other Island Batik Ambassadors!

Brenda Alburl ~ Songbird Designs

Renee Atkinson ~ Pink Tulip Quilting

Pamela Boatright ~ PamelaQuilts

Susan Deshensky ~ Lady Blue Quilts

Brittany Fisher ~ Bobbin with Brittany

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~ Mania for quilts

Reed Johnson ~ Blue Bear Quilts

Victoria Johnson ~ Forever Quilting for You

Randi Jones ~ Randi’s Roost

Connie Kauffman ~ Kauffman Designs

Emily Leachman ~ The Darling Dogwood

Denise Looney ~ Quiltery – For The Love Of Geese

Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights

Maryellen McAuliffe ~ Mary Mack Made Mine

Anorina Morris ~ sameliasmum.com

Lisa Pickering ~ Lisa’s Quilting Passion

Sarah Pitcher ~ Pitcher’s Boutique

Claudia Porter ~ Create with Claudia

Lana Russel ~ Lana Quilts

Elita Sharpe ~ Busy Needle

Gail Sheppard ~ Quilting Gail

Sandra Starley ~ Textile Time Travels

Jennifer Thomas ~ Curlicue Creations

Suzy Webster ~ Websterquilt

Island Batik Ambassador's It's All Up To You Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors got to choose what project they wanted to create with some of our gorgeous Island Batiks.  I had fun posing my project near my flowers!

I had a lot of different ideas for what to make for this challenge.  Honestly, I was having trouble deciding!

When I dug into my second Island Batik Ambassador box I found a 10" square stack of the Chromatic collection by Deb Tucker's Studio 180 design.  I love how modern this fabric feels and the colors are so fun.  Now what to do with it?

My next stop was to my Accuquilt Qube cutters.  I knew I wanted to make something I'd not done before with them.  I notice the trapezoid piece in my 12" Qube Angles Companion Set.  I decided to add my 3" half square triangle die from 12" Mix and Match Qube to make some square blocks.  By ironing the seams all in one directions the blocks were easily able to nest seams during construction!

I of course used Aurifil thread and my favorite Schmetz Microtex needles to complete my quilt as well as Hobbs 80/20 Cotton Poly batting.  It was a quick and fun quilt that measures 36 inches square and will be a baby gift at some point.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Island Batik Ambassador's Fly Away Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenge to make a quilt with flying geese using a precut of our choice.  This is not where I thought the quilt was going....so how did it get here?

I started out with a 2.5" strip set and my 8" Accuquilt Qube.  I then cut the large part of the flying geese from these strips.  I then cut the small triangles from a gorgeous creamy yellow batik.  

I then laid out all my geese and sewed them in a gradation.  I had 8 of these units altogether.

My original thought was to make a table runner like this.

But then my youngest (and very artistic) son got involved.  He did this and declared it okay, but boring.

I alternated them and thought it was good and was planning on sewing it.  But...

Then he did this!  I LOVED it.  I decided it would look amazing on point.  But of course I didn't have enough background fabric.  Fortunately I found another fabric in my Island Batik stash that was similar and I used for the outside triangles.  So that's how I ended up with my quilt!

I sewed this gorgeous quilt with my favorite Schmetz Microtex Needles, Aurifil thread, and my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting.  

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Island Batik Ambassador's Tool Craze Blog Hop

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors are debuting the new collections!  I got to play with the new Wild Blooms Collection.  It's a spring paradise of floral inspired fabrics that are just gorgeous,

As a part of the blog hop we were each give a Deb Tucker's Studio 180 ruler to use. 

The tool I received was the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star.  There are also technique sheets to go with these tools.  I choose to do a banded Lemoyne star which means that it has a narrow border around the edge of the star.  The instructions on the technique sheet and the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star tool instructions were quite clear.  It was easy to use and I was successful right away.  

The first step was to pick out fabric combinations for my stars and bands.  I decided to use some of the multicolored fabrics as the bands to add sparkle.  I then used more "solid" looking batiks for the stars.  The funny part is that after I took this picture and cut my strips to make the stars with I totally changed up what I was putting together!  It's amazing how different things can look when you have big pieces verses small strips.

Here are my final four star blocks.

I think the band on this block is probably my favorite fabric in the collection.  I have a big soft spot for orange.

I had some softer fabrics left that I did not use in the stars that I decided would make a great scrappy square border which I quickly cut with my Accuquilt GO.  Once it was all sewn together with my favorite Aurifil thread and Schmetz Microtex needles I layered my quilt with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly blend batting.

My final quilt is a nice baby quilt that will soon be on it's way to a new baby.  I hope you love the fabrics and Lemoyne stars as much as I do!

Some of the shops getting this gorgeous fabric are:

Quilter's Quarters, Cottonwood AZ

Fabric Frenzy, Wimberly TX

Hancock's of Paducah, Paducah KY

Kilauea Kreations, Volcano HI

Missouri Star Quilt Company, Hamilton MO

My Very Own Quilt Shop, Park Rapids MN

Red Pine Quilt Shop, Detroit Lakes MN

Seams Sew Perfect, Madison ME

Sew with Me, Lake Elmo MN

Island Batik has a giveaway!  Click on the link below to enter.  The collections are so GORGEOUS.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Island Batik Ambassador's Crazy Quilts Challenge

When I first read that the Island Batik Ambassadors were to make a crazy quilt using Aurifil Thread for this month's challenge I was not enthused.  I appreciate crazy quilts as they are tremendous pieces of art, however, they are a little over the top for me personally.  So...what to do?

I knew I needed to think outside the box on this one so I asked myself this question: can you make a crazy quilt modern?  I think I have satisfied that one with a resounding yes and I LOVE how it turned out!

I decided that I wanted to paper piece a modern looking circle.  I designed my pattern in Electric Quilt 8 and picked a yellow Stashbuilder Roll to pick my fabrics from.  These are 5" strips and perfect for my purpose.

This is my final selection of yummy yellows.

The paper piecing commences!

Rings complete.  Now it was time to add the fancy thread work that is typical of a crazy quilt.  Since I had yet to turn the edges of this shape under I thought it would be the perfect way to hide all the thread ends I was about to create.

I received the Stinking Corpse Lily color builder collection from Aurifil threads.  It has some gorgeous coral colors to it.  One is solid and the other two are variegated which is always fun to see all stitched out with fancy stitches from my machine.

Don't they play beautifully with the yellows?  They are going to shine against them.

Below you can see that I removed the thread from my machine.  The top and the bottom.  I then stitched around the inside and outside edges of my circle. It's like perforating the fabric and it makes turning it so much easier.

I have had my Bernina 570QE for 5 years and I'm not sure I've ever done a decorative stitch with it.  It was fun to explore the menus and try different things.  I used my favorite size 80 Schmetz Microtex needles and they worked like a charm even through all the layers.

Here is the whole circle ready to be turned with glue.

The edges are all turned under and it's time to put it on some fabric!

To hide the thin edges of my circles I decided to add a bright pink circle of a gorgeous Island Batik foundations fabric.  I love the way it brings out the color of the Aurifil Thread.  This circle of course I cut on my Accuquilt GO Big electric as it made it so much easier!  To stitch them to the background which is a Dark Grey solid Island Batik fabric I used Aurifil's invisible thread.  It's fantastic.

For the quilting I wanted to do something modern and jus the other day I was watching a Christina Cameli drawing video on Instagram where she explained how to do this pattern.  PERFECT.  I love how it adds more circles!  I of course layered it with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 poly/cotton batting.  

Project complete!  Crazy quilt?  Check.  Modern?  Check.  Do I love it?  YES!  A win-win for sure.  

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy