Island Batik Ambassador's Try It! Challenge - Part One

The June Try It Challenge for Island Batik Ambassadors was to try a technique we'd never done before.  First, I picked fabrics...aren't they luscious?  I love the raindrop fabric!

Next, I cut some strips using my Accuquilt GO! Big cutter.  It's so fast!  And of course I have my favorite Aurifil thread to sew my strip sets with.

Then we get to the try a technique part.  I bought the 9" Wedge die from Accuquilt to see what would happen if I made a complete circle.  Here are my strip sets cut with the wedge die.  Easy peasy!  It was awesome.

I had to lay part of it out to see what happened!  Sew much fun.

Here's the whole ring.  I ended up taking in a few seams to make it lie flat. 

Now...how to attach it to a background square?  It's 38 inches finished!  It's huge.  I didn't want to hand applique it.  So I decided to do it by machine with some bias strips.

First, I pinned the circle to the backing.

Then I cut 2 inch bias strips, sewed them together and ironed them in half just like binding.  In fact, I made enough to do the inside and outside of the circle AND the binding.  

I pinned OFTEN to make sure I didn't get a wrinkle.  I am an obsessive over-pinner.  I admit it.   Below is how I did the seam of my bias strips.  I know, I should'be sewn it diagonally, but I just wasn't ready to deal with it at the moment and this would do nicely.

Here you can see the two bias strips sew down.

Now to pin the other side down and machine applique it.  Since it's smaller on the inside of the bias strip than the outside I again put in a lot of pins to even out the fabric.

Yup....obsessive over-pinner. 

Come back Friday to see it all done!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy