This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to decorate Mini Iron Carry Bag from Oliso. They fit our M3Pro Mini irons perfectly. The M3Pro is my favorite mini that I've ever owned. It's light and has a great silicone pad to rest it on and cover it with when traveling. But my favorite feature is the headlight it has. It's so helpful when doing thing like ironing black binding in half. You can see it!
For this challenge I decided to use up some of my applique scraps. When I use fusible I throw decent sized scraps with fusible attached in a bag. Then I have some when I need a little something.
I adore circles. I decided they would be the perfect addition to my iron cover. So I pulled out my Accuquilt GO BIG! and got busy cutting up my scraps into circles. It ended up taking a lot of scraps to make enough circles for the entire iron cover, but it was so fun! Then all I had to do was iron them on.
A fun feature of the Mini Iron Carry Bag from Oliso is that it has a hole in the front for the silicon pad to poke out of. It's a great feature.
It's fun to look at all these dots and remember past projects and collections they were from.
Now my iron is ready to go somewhere. Looks like I need to find a retreat to go on!
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.
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!
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.
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 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!
