This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to make a Funky Friends Factory creature! I chose Hannah Hedgehog because my son has a love of hedgehogs and a birthday soon.
Hannah has been up to some shenanigans around the house. First she got out because she wanted to smell the spring crocuses.
Then she decided to try to become friends with the peeps. Or was she trying to eat them???
Finally she decided to sit on my quilt because she was curious about it. Hannah has had some adventures!
I chose the fabric for her upper body because I thought it looked spiky like hedgehogs. Then I couldn't resist the orange ears and legs. I didn't have stuffed animal eyes so I found a teal button and a black bead to use instead. She was sewn with Schmetz Needles and Aurifil thread and they worked quite well with no rips as I was stuffing her.
My son loves Hannah and says she was his favorite birthday present!
I was so excited to receive the teal 2020 Aurifil Italian Color Builder of Capri, Italy. These threads are 50 weight cotton and so beautiful. I immediately hopped on Google and started looking at pictures of Capri. What really hit me were the gorgeous teal waters and I knew I wanted to incorporate that into my project somehow.
I started by pulling teal Island Batik fabrics from my stash. I also selected a peach fabric for the background sky with the idea of creating a sunset.
I then started playing with wave formations. I must have drawn 5-10 different drawings which I was unhappy with. Finally I decided to simply cut out wave shapes and start layering them.
Final placement of the waves. Time to fuse!
Since this is an Aurifil challenge I knew I wanted to do a lot of dense quilting. I picked a different filler pattern for each of the wave fabrics. I then did some fill quilting in yellow to give the sun a dense yellow color. Finally I did bands of elongated bars in three different orange and corals to simulate the sunset. I purposely left a small band between them for added contrast. I used one layer of Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting inside my quilt. I used my favorite Schmetz Microtex Size 80 needles and it went through the layers of fusible quite easily.
I decided to topstitch down the binding in all three teal threads. However, after breaking a needle on the second outline I decided that two was enough.
I'm really happy with the way the quilt turned out!
I had such fun teaching a mystery class for the Prairie Piecemakers of New Ulm, Minnesota this weekend! I wrote this mystery especially for them and it was fun to see it come to life in so many different fabrics.
This was the center block of some of the quilters. So pretty!
In order to keep the ladies sewing I volunteered to trim half square triangle units. My thumb still hurts from pressing down on the ruler, but I was happy to help.
I made three piles this size...
The ladies were all really happy with their progress and I hope to see their finished quilts sometime.
Is your guild interested in having me write and teach a mystery? Contact me at websterquilt @ gmail dot com for inquiries!
Row by Row quilts. If I'm being honest, they've never been my favorite. I am a symmetrical girl. I love all things symmetry. Sometimes I go outside this box, but honestly, not often. So understandably Row by Row quilts have never appealed to me.
In thinking outside the box, I started thinking about traditional Navajo blankets. I even drafted a lovely quilt on this idea on graph paper as I could not quite get Electric Quilt 8 to play nicely with me the way I wanted it to. However, when I started thinking about my fabrics they just didn't jive with a Navajo blanket.
So I went back to the drawing board with the goal of making my Row by Row more modern. I also decided that the top and bottom would be the same....symmetrical.
I drew out this quilt on graph paper and fell in love with it. I also decided to do a gradation from warm in the center to cool on the outside edges. With 16 different fabrics it was quite a trick to keep it all straight and to cut the right pieces from the right fabric!
I also designed this quilt to be made with my AccuQuilt GO! 8 inch Qube. It always makes things easier and accurate to cut my pieces with my GO! Big cutter. This quilt was no exception. Despite being 72 inches wide, I had no trouble aligning the rows to each other and no trouble with certain rows being larger or smaller than others. It always amazes me, but it happens every time!
I've decided this quilt is called Modern Glow. It seems to fit.
The Island Batik Contempo Collection by Kathy Engle for Kate Colleran Designs is just gorgeous. I love the modern feel and the way the pink and red are both incorporated into the rainbow. I kept trying to add all the multicolor prints into this quilt, but with the rainbow effect going on they just didn't work. I have other thoughts about another project using them though. When I get time!
Planning and figuring out where each fabric belonged. It's one of my favorite parts of the process. And with a black background of Island Batik solid (swoon...so lovely to work with) I knew the colors would just pop. I of course then had to sew my quilt with black Aurifil thread and my favorite Schmetz Microtex needles.
Sewing units together! Always exciting.
Just keep sewing. Just keep sewing!
Such happy colors! They made me smile so much as I worked with them.
This "block" is so fun and modern. I love how different it is.
The rows are coming together! As are the Legos all over my house. Life with kids!
The center row had me stumped for a while. I had cut a bunch of half square triangles to use in some fashion. They did not work the way I had originally intended. So I ended up laying out a bunch of ideas until I was happy.
Modern Quilt. Modern Quilting. I chose six different background fillers. Then I made them HUGE and quilted them all over the black. It took about 10 hours to quilt, but I love the finished effect. I used oranges, rows of bread, curls, outlined circles, outlined rectangles, and pebbles with echoing. It was fun and used a TON of thread, but I couldn't be happier with the result. The texture is so yummy and shows so well on the black Island Batik solid. I used my favorite Hobbs 80/20 batting in this quilt, but I used the black version. So amazing to put black batting in a black quilt.
Giveaway! You can win your own Island Batik fat quarter collections! Click here: a Rafflecopter giveaway
I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy
Be sure to check out the other amazing Row by Row quilts and all the fabulous new Island Batik Collections!
Yesterday I showed you my quilt made from the scraps from my original idea for using the gorgeous Island Batik Ravishing Reds gradation. I finally got the binding on the first quilt so now I can share it with you!
When I was trying to decide what block to use my gradations in I immediately thought of my Pickle Dish Accuquilt Die. It has 15 pieces in the arc which made it easy to incorporate a lot of colors.
I started by laying out sets of fabrics for the interior and exterior triangles.
Then I cut a LOT of pieces and had fun starting to sew the arcs together. I had to be really careful not to get the pieces out of order.
I also decided to put in some drunkards path blocks for interest and to add something different to the quilt to make it my own. I have sewn curves before, but I feel like this time I really got the hang of it. I have much more confidence in myself.
I ran into a challenge on the inside orange peel shapes. I had fat quarters of all the fabrics and now matter how I laid it out I could only get seven shapes from the fabric. What to do? I pieced one. That was the only way.
Now it was time to quilt! I used Aurifil Invisible thread to stitch continuous curve in all the arcs. It flowed quite smoothly through my Schmetz Microtex needles. I really didn't want to have to switch colors all the time and it worked excellently. In the orange peels I quilted a simple feather. I thought about using Hobbs Black 80/20 batting in this quilt, but decided against it because there were a lot of light fabrics so I used regular Hobbs 80/20 batting, my favorite.
In the center of the quilt are four curvy areas, I decided to add some interest by diving it into separate areas as shown. I did some pebbles in the center and arches at the edges.
In the white areas I wanted to mimic the arches of the interior black areas. I made four arches for each piece which made them easy to space out. I also did something in the center arc to add interest.
The outer black ring left me stumped for a while. I finally decided to go simple and do a wide feather to fill all the space.
I'm REALLY happy with how this turned out. Ironically...this is the second pickle dish quilt I've made. The first isn't done yet...haven't we heard this story before? LOL. My pile of quilts layered and waiting for quilting is exploding of late. I have a few to keep me busy. Or a dozen.
