Websterquilt: Island Batik Ambassador's Creative Borders and Binding Challenge

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Island Batik Ambassador's Creative Borders and Binding Challenge

I adore being an Island Batik Ambassador. Their fabrics are luscious and I get to stretch creatively to meet the monthly challenges. This month is no exception. When I realized it was creative borders and bindings my brain went right over the borders and straight to the binding. I have been staring at many new show quilts from big name quilters that have AMAZING edge finishes. To keep up with the best of the best on my show quilts I wanted to try it. Now I have a reason to do something small and experiment!

I started by making this small 20" quilt with the new Blue Moon collection from Island Batik. The colors and fabrics are so much fun! I love the blue double dotty print and the dark purple birch tress that I turned into a "stripe" in the large points. I then added a border of purple triangles and was set to quilt. This quilt has Hobbs Tuscany Polyester batting in it to give it loft and because it's white and the background fabric is white. A good match.

Aren't the patterns of the batiks great? I love the lighter purple which looks like wood grain too. The background fabric is this same print in white. I started by quilting the center circle in bubbles.

It's easier to see from the back...

I did a plant like idea in the points and repeated it triangles. I also did a bubble stack on the dark purple birch fabric to enhance the stripy quality of it. (see above photo)

I then quilted feathers coming out of each point to fill the space and the did some straight line quilting around the edge. I like to do this so that when I add the binding the edge of the quilt is firm and doesn't stretch.

The back of the final quilt. I adore feathers.

Now to attach the clam shells in the binding. But how? I realized finally that the answer was in the quilt as you go challenge. I tried it and it worked like a charm. Putting the tails together at the corners was a bit of a challenge, but I figured it out.

And it will get better....

Aren't the cute? Since I started with fat quarters I didn't have enough fabric to do them all the same, but necessity is the mother of invention so I made them a variety of fabrics and I love it!