Island Batik Ambassador's It's All Up To You Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors got to choose what they wanted to make.  I fell in love with Island Batik's Exuberance collection as soon as I saw it.  All the deep pinks and blues with a pop of orange made me smile.  It's an unusual color collection that I haven't worked with a lot which made it a lot of fun for me.  I decided I wanted to play with a two block quilt where they come together to make interesting elements.  Do you see the octagons make with the dark pinks and purples?  Such  a fun secondary pattern.  

The Exuberance collection was designed by Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design.  Which one is your favorite?  My favorite is the pink and orange fabric second from the top on the right side.

For this quilt I knew I wanted to use the Accuquilt North Carolina Star as one of the blocks.  It has a lot of pieces and makes it fun to play with a bunch of different fabrics.  Getting those pink points to match up at the edges was a real challenge, but that's why I LOVE pins so much.  Ask my quilty friends...I am an obsessive over pinner.

After my puff quilt last month I had about 14" of each fabric to work with.  You can see that I figured out how to use 9 of them in each North Carolina Star block.  However, I didn't have enough of some of them so I used two in the same space which actually worked out well as it provides a little extra interest.

See what I mean about pins?  I really like Clover's ultra fine pins for going through lots of layers of batik.  I also really like Schmetz Microtex Needles  and Aurifil thread for going through all the layers!

Quilting this quilt was a lot of fun and of course I used my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting.  I didn't want to have to make a ton of thread changes so it is mostly quilted in turquoise, pink, gray and cream.  I can never have enough feathers so they are in the other border and you can see the paisleys in the gray of the star block.

Here you can see the alternate block.  It has some fun chains and a star in the middle.  I wanted the cream to have an interesting texture so I used wavy matchsticks on all of these blocks.

Look carefully at the pink in the North Carolina Star.  I did a feathers all around the octagon wreath.

Quilt Complete!

Look closely.  The inner blocks have a slightly lighter blue chain than the outer edge.  The inner stars also have pink corners where as along the edge there is a pink and orange fabric.  Fun little details that happen out of necessity when you have only a certain amount of fabric to use.

If you would like to purchase these fabrics, you can find them at:

 Amy's Quilt Room, PA

Block Party Studios, IA
Creekside Quilts, OR
Hancocks of Paducah, KY
Tucker University, OH
Castle Sewing Centre-CANADA BC
Mulqueen Sewing & Fabric Centers, AZ

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy