Websterquilt

Thursday, June 19, 2025

Island Batik Ambassador's Funky Friends Factory Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to make some fun stuffed animals from Funky Friends Factory. I have made a few of their patterns before and they are always fun and I always learn a lot. This year I chose to make Chrissy Camel. My youngest son loves stuffed animals and I knew the camel would end up in his collection so I asked him which color he wanted the camel to be and he decided on purple.

This pattern had a lot of pieces, but once the sewing started it with my favorite Schmetz Microtex Needles he went together quickly. I started by ironing my fabric with my Oliso iron. It sure does a great job steaming out wrinkles. There are pictures of what to do on the Funky Friends Factory website which were really helpful! I of course sewed him together with my favorite Aurifil thread.

Putting the bottom hoof on. It was a lot of pins, but went together more easily than I expected. I stuffed him with Hobbs polyfil and it worked wonderfully. I'm always surprised how much stuffing actually goes inside a stuffed animal!

I couldn't find my box of embroidery floss to make his tail. However, I have a ton of rick rack and happened to have the perfect purple. It's funny because I bought this rick rack on the way back from Paducah and it was so old it only cost 38 cents a yard!

My flowers are in full bloom in my yard so I decided it was the perfect place to photograph my camel which my son has dubbed Caramello. He started out by checking out some salvia, but it wasn't purple enough for him.

Next up were the iris. Two beautiful purples to choose from.

And finally into my son's arms. He sure likes him! It made all the effort worth it.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Island Batik Ambassador's Irish Chain Blog Hop with Accuquilt

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors received the new Irish Chain Die from Accuquilt. Irish chain is a very traditional pattern and always fun to make and the Accuquilt die makes it super easy to cut out. It was fun to take a picture of it with all my spring bulbs in bloom!

For this blog hop I received the beautiful Jabberwocky Collection. These patterns are fun and modern and were a blast to play with. I pieced my quilt using my favorite cream Aurifil thread and pressed flat with my Oliso iron.

I had fun quilting my project using my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting and Schmetz Microtex needles. I did a bunch of continuous curve over the entire surface.

I used the orange - purple plus the white print for the x's in my Irish Chain. I then used the yellow-blue for the backgrounds. I love how the rainbow came out and I think the blue binding sets it off nicely.

Be sure to click to enter to win a fat quarter bundle from Island Batik!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Be sure to check out all the other amazing new collections from Island Batik!

May 5:

May 6:

May 7:

May 8:

May 9:

Blog Hop Round-Up Week 1 and Giveaway

WEEK 2

May 12:

May 13:

Connie Kresin Campbell, Freemotion by the River

May 14:

May 15:

May 16:

Blog Hop Round-Up Week 2 and Giveaway

WEEK 3

May 19:

May 20:

May 21:

Susan Deshensky, Lady Blue Quilt Studio

May 22:

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Island Batik Ambassador's Drunkard's Path Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenge to make Drunkard's Path blocks. I have always like this block, but have never made a large number of them.

I started with a 4" Accuquilt die. I had some gorgeous Petal Poetry by Jerry Khiev for Megan Best of Best Quilter leftover from my February challenge. For whatever reason I decided to figure out just how many blocks I could make with my scraps. The answer was 252.

I worked on a design in Electric Quilter 8. I ended up doing a 240 block design. I wanted something modern looking so I used a solid grade Island Batik solid for the background fabric.

I learned a lot about sewing Drunkard's Path blocks. First, it was really helpful to glue the two ends and the middle registration mark with a dot of glue. Then I was able to add in pins to hold the rest of the curve. After sewing about 20 of them I wondered what I had gotten myself into making 240!?

I also discovered that pressing the block open with my hand gently and then ironing helped to keep the block from stretching out of shape. I of course used my Oliso iron.

But I kept at it. 10-20 a day and finished. Then sewing them together into the finished quilt was easy! These were of course sewn with my favorite Aurifil thread and Schmetz Microtex needles.

I then layered the quilt with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting. It makes my quilts nice and flat.

I decided to quilt only the gray background with some simple continuous curve in the quarter circles. In the background I used three designs at random: spirals, pebbles, and a leafy feather.

I was happy to finish this quilt! No more curved seams for a while.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Island Batik Ambassadors Its All Up To You Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to make anything we wanted! I have an overflowing scrap bin which made me decide on a scrap quilt. Oddly enough even after this project I still have an overflowing scrap bin. It seems to be a constant problem!

One of the things I love about this quilt is that it uses over 250 different scraps and all are Island Batiks! It was fun to relive some of the previous collections I've worked with. And I only accidentally repeated a fabric in 2 spots.

I started the journey of this quilt when I fell in love with this pattern by Kaye England. It's called Amber Waves of Grain. It has these cute teeny tiny stars in it and I love the block. However, upon further examination I realized that I couldn't cut those teeny tiny stars with my Accuquilt GO! and I really didn't want to cut them by hand. So I decided on a simple square instead of a star. Every single piece is 1 1/2" wide by some length. It was a lot of cutting and would never have been made without my Accuquilt GO!

Some of the blocks I was able to construct as a whole (here they are) and others were partials. This lead to a real challenge because I had to lay it out one row at a time as I was stitching. This lead to it being on the cutting table for a while! But it also encouraged me to get it done so I could get it off the cutting table! I of course sewed it with my favorite Aurifil thread and Schmetz Microtex needles.

Here are the first few rows put together. It's a large quilt!

Ta da! All done. This is one HEAVY quilt with all the seam allowances in there. Each strip is only 1" wide finished so there is a lot of seam allowance. But I love how it turned out and my Oliso iron helped get it really flat! It's so cheerful. My husband says it looks like a candy shop. I'll take that as a complement. I didn't want to work this behemoth under my sit down longarm, so I had my mom quilt it using our favorite Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Island Batik Ambassadors Runner Up Blog Hop

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to make a quilt using a Deb Tucker's Studio 180 tool. I was excited to receive the Corner Pop III tool. We were also encourage to use other tools we own so I also decided to use the Wing Clipper tool to make some flying geese.

I finished my runner yesterday. Usually I like to take a pretty photo outside. But it's Minnesota and currently -11 degrees outside. Not a good day for a photo. So I took my runner with me to work and hung it on my classroom door!

This is the Corner Pop III tool. It worked so slick! You trim off a corner and then add in a new piece all using just the one tool. It won't be the last time I use it.

For this challenge I received the Petal Poetry collection by Jerry Khiev for Megan Best of Best Quilter. It's a gorgeous collection of purple, green, and blue florals.

I made two different sized flying geese using my Wing Clipper tool. I decided to make one of the triangle corners a different fabric so I could use as many of the gorgeous fabrics as possible! Plus it's not something I have done before which also makes it fun. I of course sewed all my blocks together with my favorite Aurifil Thread and Schmetz Microtex needles. I also used my new Oliso M3Pro project iron. I love that it has a headlight! It makes things so easy to see when you are ironing.

I then used the Corner Pop III tool to trim off a corner and add a skinny purple triangle. Here you can see the three finished blocks I made. I decided to use different fabrics in each block and had fun mixing and matching the prints.

I layered my quilt with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting. Then I got to quilting. I had fun making feathers in the skinny purple triangles and green and purple prints. I left the green one alone so it would pop some.