Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Island Batik Ambassador's Bountiful Table Toppers

It's time for Island Batik Ambassador's September event! This month we're making table toppers. After making last month's Seaside Summer project I had all these 2 inch hexies that I'd cut on my mom's Accuquilt Go cutter and then glue basted around some 2 inch hexies. They were originally supposed to be rocks around the fish, but they were too big compared to the fish, so I had a stack of about 125 hexies from the gorgeous Spring Zing collection from Island Batiks. What to do? Make a table topper of course!




Below you can see the back of the quilt before it was layered.  Using the Go cutter and glue made the process of making hexagons pretty painless.



The obvious choice was to sew all the hexagons together. However, I really didn't want to hand sew all those seams. So I decided to try zigzagging them together. I thought about using invisible thread, but I have a love/hate relationship with that stuff and I really didn't want to fight with it. So I decided to zigzag them together with black Aurifil 50 weight thread. It worked slick!


Here is the topper all sew together (each section was zigzagged over twice) and layered with scrumptious Hobbs Wool/Cotton batting.  It's nice and flat like cotton, but it gets a little loft like wool.  I really like it and it's easy to work with.


Since the hexagons were sewn together with black thread I decided it made sense to do the quilting in black thread too so I wouldn't have to change color all the time.  I decided to simply do a wandering feather all over the quilt.  Some of the feathers are regular, some are hooked on feathers and some are curl feathers.  I just went for it and didn't worry about making a pattern of any sort.  I like the overall effect.  I used a black Fufu embroidery thread, which I don't think I'll use again for machine quilting.  The bobbin didn't like it much and I had quite a few knots on the back.  No big deal for a simple table topper, but I wouldn't use it on my show quilts for sure.


I went with a black binding and I think it makes a nice frame.  The black is from Island Batik's Fire Island line of fabrics.  You can see how the Cotton/Wool quilted up.  It's pretty flat, but still gives my feathers a little puff.  Perfect for a table topper!



I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy







4 comments:

  1. When you zigzag them together did you have a stabilizer under them???

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  2. I love the definition the black zigzag stitch gives the hexies. It really helps the beautiful colors to pop. The quilting motif you chose also adds great movement to the quilt.

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  3. This is a beautiful topper, the colors are fantastic. The black stitching frames each hexie beautifully, and it is such a smart way to sew them together!

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  4. The quilting makes the fabric look like it was marbled.

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