Websterquilt: September 2023

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Island Batik Ambassador's Pieced to Perfection Blog Hop

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to create a foundation paper pieced or English paper pieced project. I have a great love for New York Beauty blocks. I also like to make 4 of them to make a complete circle.

For my paper pieced project I received the gorgeous Ornate Gems collection by Kathy Engle for Heidi Pridemore of The Whimsical Workshop. When I looked ta the patterns to the fabrics I knew I wanted to make a large New York Beauty to showcase the beautiful fabrics.

I designed a simple New York Beauty block in Electric Quilt 8, but it wouldn't let me print it as large as I wanted it. What to do? Make a smaller print and then take it to FedEx Office to increase the size on their large scale printer. It was more expensive than I had anticipated, but made the job so much easier!

I then cut my pieces and started paper piecing. Here is the middle ring all complete.

The next challenge was connecting the rings to each other. The first thing I did was stitch along the edge of the ring with no thread in the machine to perforate the fabric and the paper. Then I peeled back about an inch of the paper and was able to glue baste the circle's seam allowance down. This was easy due to the perforation in the fabric.

Then I pinned the rings together and sewed a 1/8" topstitch around the edge of the circle to connect the rings. Then there was a lot of paper ripping to do!

This project got so big I finally brought up an extra table to help me pin.

I then layered my quilt with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Poly Cotton batting and had fun quilting wavy lines radiating from the center of the quilt with Aurifil Thread and Schmetz Microtex Needles.