I am excited to be an Island Batik Ambassador for the 10th year! What an anniversary! Island Batik is fabulous to work with and their products are the best on the market. We also have some fantastic quilt industry partners who shared their products with us this year.
Here's what I received in my fabulous boxes!
The Bright Tidings collection. It's a Christmas collection, but the fabrics are so fun and cheerful and not traditional. I can't wait to paly with it! There are two beautiful 2 yard cuts of blue foundations fabrics to go with it. The foundations fabrics are fabrics that Island Batik has available all year.
The Just Dandy Collection. I love the gradations in this one and the cheerful colors. There are also 2 yard cuts of a dark blue and cream foundations fabric to go with the 10" stack.
There is a 10" stack of glorious greens and a 2 1/2" strip set of precious pink. This combination makes me think flowers and spring!
I received 6 yards of cream to use as a background as well as 4 yards of solid white, black, and dark gray to use as a background. I've not used the dark gray as a background before and I want to challenge myself to use it this year.
This is as set of 12 half-yard cuts of foundations fabrics. There are 4 solids, 4 blenders, and 4 prints in this grouping. They are wonderful to mix in when you need a tone-on-tone fabric or a solid. The best part of Island Batik solids is that they're batik quality fabric and just like batiks they don't ravel like other solids!
These are stashbuster rolls. They are 5" strip packs. Each one contains 20 5" strips. They are great for scrap quilts or when you want a variety of one color in a quilt. They also work great for applique because then you have a lot of different fabrics of the same color to choose from.
This is the gorgeous Petal Poetry collection by Jerry Khiev for Megan Best of Best Quilter. It has a ton of gorgeous green, turquoise, and purple fabrics. I can't wait to use this one for my February project!
This is a secret new collection for my May project. You'll have to wait and see what it is!
Our first industry partner is Deb Tucker's Studio 180. I received the Corner Pop 3 tool. It lets you add a skinny triangle to the corner of any block. Now to decide which block to make!
Our next industry partner is Hobbs Batting. I have used Hobbs for years and it is absolutely my favorite batting. I've got a few to play with. The first is Tuscany wool. Wool batting is really warm and adds a lot of loft to quilts. It's great to sleep under during a Minnesota Winter!
The next batting is Heirloom Premium Cotton batting. It's fantastic to work with.
I also received an Heirloom Natural cotton batting and an 80/20 black batting. The black batting is perfect for inside black or dark colored quilts. Like the one I want to make with a dark gray background!
We also received some Simply Stuffing to put inside a stuffed animal project that is upcoming.
Schmetz Needles is again a sponsor this year and gifted us with a notepad, lots of needle information and three packs of needles: Universal Needles, Vinyl Needles, and Piecing and Quilting Needles.
Oliso is a partner for the second year in a row. This year we got the M3Pro mini iron. I absolutely adore it. I has an off button so you can turn it off between uses and sits on a silicone mat for ease of use (you don't have to stand it up). The silicon mat also serves as a protective cover for the iron. It's best feature is a headlight right on the front of the iron. This is the absolute best feature for ironing binding if half because you can really see what you're doing. We also got an iron bag for transporting this cute little iron to class or retreats!
Aurifil has provided the ambassadors with some piecing thread. I received gold, brown, and black.
We also received a die from Accuquilt. The new Irish Chain die. I created two patterns using this die already as a designer for Accuquilt and am excited to play with it some more.
And that's what was in my first Island Batik Ambassador box of the year! Stay tuned for lots of wonderful projects in the future!
This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were left to their own devices to decide what they wanted to create. The possibilities were endless. Sometimes that makes it harder to figure out! That is until inspiration strikes...
I had a 10" square stack of the Daisy May collection by Kathy Engle that I'd been staring at and I decided this was the perfect opportunity to use it. I love the oranges and yellows and turquoise and teal. They are such happy colors.
I also have a new Accuquilt die called Pine Burr. It's a Block on Board die so all the pieces needed to make it are included on one die. I decided to simply cut as many of the little triangles as I could from each square and then see how many I had and what I could do with them.
After I knew how many triangles I had I put the block in Electric Quilt and started to play. I decided to make some of the units have more oranges and yellow and others have more teals and turquoises. It made the quilt more dynamic and also made it easier to use up all the triangles I had cut. I also picked out a nice neutral background from my Island Batik stash.
Now to do all the piecing! The advantage of using an Accuquilt die is that all the pieces worked PERFECTLY. I stitched them with 50 weight Aurifil thread and my favorite Schmetz Microtex needles which go through batiks like butter. However, I did have to press them all open because of the sheer volume of seams. It took awhile, but I'm very happy with how it turned out. I then steam the blocks nice and flat with my Oliso iron. It's steaming powers are amazing.
I decided to do some continuous curve quilting on all the background triangles and the three smaller triangles in the blocks. The quilt is layered with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting.
I think the yellow with teal flower fabric below is my favorite one in the collection. It's so cheerful!
Project complete! I love how the placement of the fabrics lets me have a dynamic design that lets your eye move around the quilt.
This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenge to create a Byannie - Patterns by Annie bag project. I chose to make a Ditty Bag 2.0. I found this to be one of Annie's easier patterns and I really enjoyed it. The add on videos helped with any part I found confusing and it's great to be able to see it being completed in a video. The first step was to iron all my fabric flat with my wonderful Oliso iron.
I chose to make three different sizes of bags. While sewing I always do my largest bag first to get an understanding of the pattern. Then I do the same step on the medium and small bags. This way when I get to the small pieces I know what to do. I used a white thread for all my sewing and matching threads for all the quilting. All Aurifil threads sewn with Schmetz Microtex needles of course.
Here is the small the small Ditty Bag. It's made with the Island Zest collection from Island Batik. It has a turtle print stripe! In retrospect I would have switched the turtle and the red fabric so you could see more turtles. However, I love it. It's small and great for a makeup bag or a cord bag when traveling.
The medium Ditty Bag is made with the Poetic Bouquet Collection from Island Batik. I love this purple and how it makes the purple in the blue print pop. It's a great size for a small medicine bag for a short trip or for holding your quilting notions.
The large Ditty Bag was made with the Turtle Cove Collection by Island Batik. I love how you can really see the turtles on this one. In retrospect I would've picked a more contrasting print for the stripe, but it's still a lot of fun. It's a big bag. I would probably even work as a lunch bag.
These are all wonderful bags and I can't wait to give them to some of my favorite people for Christmas!
This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to create applique quilts using the edge coloring technique and 40 weight Aurifil thread. I have always loved the Fantasy Flowers Accuquilt die by Robbi Joy Ecklo. It's a larger flower at almost 14 inches across which means it's excellent to show off fabrics!
Applique has always been one of my favorite things to do and it was fun to learn a new technique.
For this project I received the Floral Fun collections. It's a gorgeous array of blue, green, and purple. It's designed by Kathy Engle for Terri Vanden Bosch of Lizard Creek Quliting.
I decided to make each flower in a different set of colors. Here's one such arrangement. I love this deep dark purple. So pretty.
Here is another set of fabrics for a flower.
In order to do the edge stitching method you glue down the pieces and don't use any fusible. I was having trouble with squeezing the glue bottle (it was hurting my hand). So I went online to see what other kind if bottles I might use. I found these tiny ones at Michaels and they worked perfectly and it was so much easier!
In order to get the hexagonal symmetry of this block right I ironed my background fabric so I knew where to put down the initial green leaves.
Then I added the petals.
I picked out threads to use for this project and was glad to be using 40 weight. It provided a thicker line than my usual 50 weight Aurifil. I found switching to a slightly larger needle also helped keep the 40 weight thread happy in my machine. I used a size 90 Microtex Needle by Schmetz Needles.
I used an open toe applique foot to stitch back and forth along the edge of the petal using my 40 weight Aurifil Thread. I also found it helpful to use the same weight and color thread in the top and bobbin while doing the edge stitching.
The top is complete! Time to get layering with my favorite Hobbs Batting 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting. I decided to offset the flower blocks with some piecing. This my version of a delectable mountains block.
I did some simple stippling to finish off the quilt and some curvy quilting in the blues. I love how this quilt turned out!
Island Batik is having a giveaway of two fat quarter bundles! Click below to enter.
