Island Batik Ambassador 2025 Box #2 Reveal!

Each year Island Batik (now a part of Lumin Fabrics) sends their ambassadors two boxes of amazing fabric and products.  This latest (my 20th?! ever) was no exception! 

These are two sets of foundations fabrics.  Foundations are fabrics that are available all the time from Island Batik and are not part of specific collections.  They have solids, batik solids, and batik prints.  

This 10" stack is called Colorburst.  It's a beautiful rainbow.  I also received two yards of red and cream to go with it.  I'm already thinking of what rainbowy project I could make.

I was really excited to find this Naturally Neutral strip set in my box!  It's going to be a great background for a scrappy quilt.

This is 4 yards of black, white, and gray solids.  It's fabulous for backgrounds for quilts.  It doesn't fray like traditional cottons can and is a pleasure to work with.

I also received 6 yards of this fun cream fabric.  I think it would make a great background for a modern quilt. 

This 10" stack of playful purples is also so pretty.  I'm thinking it might make a good lone star.  I also received 2 yards of cream and purple to go with it.

You can see I've already opened and started playing with this half-yard bundle of fabric.  It's the fabric for my September project.  Gorgeous.

I also received 4 spools of Aurifil thread to go with this collection.  So beautiful!  I'm already thinking about exactly what I want to make.

These three fabrics are for making a By Annie bag!  I am in love with the middle red flower fabric.  SO SO pretty.

These are Stash Builder Rolls!  They are 5" strips of a whole variety of fabrics.  Each set has 20 fabrics.  I use them all the time to add more range to quilts.

I'm a Hobbs Batting girl and was so excited to find these two batts in my box.  The first one is Cotton Wool Blend.  It's fabulous for putting behind machine applique quilts.  The other is Supreme Cotton which is thicker than normal cotton and great to work with.

These three batts are polydown (I use this in warm quilts), 80/20 blend (my favorite ever) and fusible batting (great for when you don't want to baste!).  I'm excited to use them in my projects.

Here's a video telling you even more about what was in my box!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Island Batik Ambassador's Funky Friends Factory Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to make some fun stuffed animals from Funky Friends Factory.  I have made a few of their patterns before and they are always fun and I always learn a lot.  This year I chose to make Chrissy Camel.  My youngest son loves stuffed animals and I knew the camel would end up in his collection so I asked him which color he wanted the camel to be and he decided on purple.

This pattern had a lot of pieces, but once the sewing started it with my favorite Schmetz Microtex Needles he went together quickly.  I started by ironing my fabric with my Oliso iron.  It sure does a great job steaming out wrinkles.  There are pictures of what to do on the Funky Friends Factory website which were really helpful!  I of course sewed him together with my favorite Aurifil thread.

Putting the bottom hoof on.  It was a lot of pins, but went together more easily than I expected.  I stuffed him with Hobbs polyfil and it worked wonderfully.  I'm always surprised how much stuffing actually goes inside a stuffed animal!

I couldn't find my box of embroidery floss to make his tail.  However, I have a ton of rick rack and happened to have the perfect purple.  It's funny because I bought this rick rack on the way back from Paducah and it was so old it only cost 38 cents a yard!

My flowers are in full bloom in my yard so I decided it was the perfect place to photograph my camel which my son has dubbed Caramello.  He started out by checking out some salvia, but it wasn't purple enough for him.

Next up were the iris.  Two beautiful purples to choose from.

And finally into my son's arms.  He sure likes him!  It made all the effort worth it.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Island Batik Ambassador's Irish Chain Blog Hop with Accuquilt

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors received the new Irish Chain Die from Accuquilt.  Irish chain is a very traditional pattern and always fun to make and the Accuquilt die makes it super easy to cut out.  It was fun to take a picture of it with all my spring bulbs in bloom!

For this blog hop I received the beautiful Jabberwocky Collection.  These patterns are fun and modern and were a blast to play with.  I pieced my quilt using my favorite cream Aurifil thread and pressed flat with my Oliso iron.

I had fun quilting my project using my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting and Schmetz Microtex needles.  I did a bunch of continuous curve over the entire surface.

I used the orange - purple plus the white print for the x's in my Irish Chain.  I then used the yellow-blue for the backgrounds.  I love how the rainbow came out and I think the blue binding sets it off nicely.

Be sure to click to enter to win a fat quarter bundle from Island Batik!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Be sure to check out all the other amazing new collections from Island Batik!

May 5:

• Mania Hatzioannidi, Mania for Quilts
• Jennifer Thomas, Curlicue Creations

May 6:

• Kimberly Flannagan, Kimberly’s Quilts
• Solomae Stoycoff, Cuddle Cat Quiltworks

May 7:

• Connie Kauffman, Kauffman Designs
• Sarah Pitcher, Pitcher’s Boutique LLC

May 8:

• Leah Malasky, Quilted Delights
• Preeti Harris, Sew Preeti Quilts

May 9:

Blog Hop Round-Up Week 1 and Giveaway

WEEK 2

May 12:

• Lisa Pickering, Lisa’s Quilting Passion
• Suzy Webster, Websterquilt

May 13:

• Connie Kresin Campbell, Freemotion by the River

May 14:

• Denise Looney, Quiltery
• Brittany Fisher, Bobbin with Brittany

May 15:

• Susan Michaels, Dragonfly Fiber Art
• Kim Jamieson-Hirst, Chatterbox Quilts

May 16:

Blog Hop Round-Up Week 2 and Giveaway

WEEK 3

May 19:

• Renee Atkinson, Pink Tulip Quilting
• Brenda Alburl, Songbird Designs

May 20:

• Tina Dillard, Quilting Affection Designs
• Carol Stanek, Stitch With Color

May 21:

• Susan Deshensky, Lady Blue Quilt Studio

May 22:

• Gail Sheppard, Quilting Gail
• Emily Leachman, The Darling Dogwood

Island Batik Ambassador's Drunkard's Path Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenge to make Drunkard's Path blocks.  I have always like this block, but have never made a large number of them.

I started with a 4" Accuquilt die.  I had some gorgeous Petal Poetry by Jerry Khiev for Megan Best of Best Quilter leftover from my February challenge.  For whatever reason I decided to figure out just how many blocks I could make with my scraps.  The answer was 252.  

I worked on a design in Electric Quilter 8.  I ended up doing a 240 block design.  I wanted something modern looking so I used a solid grade Island Batik solid for the background fabric.  

I learned a lot about sewing Drunkard's Path blocks.  First, it was really helpful to glue the two ends and the middle registration mark with a dot of glue.  Then I was able to add in pins to hold the rest of the curve.  After sewing about 20 of them I wondered what I had gotten myself into making 240!?  

I also discovered that pressing the block open with my hand gently and then ironing helped to keep the block from stretching out of shape.  I of course used my Oliso iron.

But I kept at it.  10-20 a day and finished.  Then sewing them together into the finished quilt was easy!  These were of course sewn with my favorite Aurifil thread and Schmetz Microtex needles.

I then layered the quilt with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting.  It makes my quilts nice and flat.

I decided to quilt only the gray background with some simple continuous curve in the quarter circles.  In the background I used three designs at random: spirals, pebbles, and a leafy feather.

I was happy to finish this quilt!  No more curved seams for a while.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Island Batik Ambassadors Its All Up To You Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to make anything we wanted!  I have an overflowing scrap bin which made me decide on a scrap quilt.  Oddly enough even after this project I still have an overflowing scrap bin.  It seems to be a constant problem! 

One of the things I love about this quilt is that it uses over 250 different scraps and all are Island Batiks!  It was fun to relive some of the previous collections I've worked with.  And I only accidentally repeated a fabric in 2 spots.  

I started the journey of this quilt when I fell in love with this pattern by Kaye England.  It's called Amber Waves of Grain.  It has these cute teeny tiny stars in it and I love the block.  However, upon further examination I realized that I couldn't cut those teeny tiny stars with my Accuquilt GO! and I really didn't want to cut them by hand.  So I decided on a simple square instead of a star.  Every single piece is 1 1/2" wide by some length.  It was a lot of cutting and would never have been made without my Accuquilt GO!

Some of the blocks I was able to construct as a whole (here they are) and others were partials.  This lead to a real challenge because I had to lay it out one row at a time as I was stitching.  This lead to it being on the cutting table for a while!  But it also encouraged me to get it done so I could get it off the cutting table!  I of course sewed it with my favorite Aurifil thread and Schmetz Microtex needles.  

Here are the first few rows put together.  It's a large quilt!

Ta da!  All done.  This is one HEAVY quilt with all the seam allowances in there.  Each strip is only 1" wide finished so there is a lot of seam allowance.  But I love how it turned out and my Oliso iron helped get it really flat!  It's so cheerful.  My husband says it looks like a candy shop.  I'll take that as a complement.  I didn't want to work this behemoth under my sit down longarm, so I had my mom quilt it using our favorite Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy