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 challenged to make a quilt for an organization highlighted by Deb Tucker of Studio 180 called Sleep in Heavenly Peace. This organization makes beds for children so that no child sleeps on the floor. Their goal is to get kids off the floor, into a bed, and under a quilt.
I used the Dots and Doodles collection from Island Batik along with Deb Tucker's V Block trimmer.
The V Block tool works amazingly well! Here I am cutting and preparing one block for my project.
It turned out perfectly one trimmed and made sewing together the whole quilt a breeze! The quilt of course uses Schmetz Microtex Needles to pieces and quilt with as well as Aurifil Thread and my favorite Hobbs 80/20 batting inside. My Oliso iron worked wonderfully to iron all the blocks for this project.
This month the Island Batik Ambassadors got to choose what project they wanted to create with some of our gorgeous Island Batiks. I had fun posing my project near my flowers!
I had a lot of different ideas for what to make for this challenge. Honestly, I was having trouble deciding!
When I dug into my second Island Batik Ambassador box I found a 10" square stack of the Chromatic collection by Deb Tucker's Studio 180 design. I love how modern this fabric feels and the colors are so fun. Now what to do with it?
My next stop was to my Accuquilt Qube cutters. I knew I wanted to make something I'd not done before with them. I notice the trapezoid piece in my 12" Qube Angles Companion Set. I decided to add my 3" half square triangle die from 12" Mix and Match Qube to make some square blocks. By ironing the seams all in one directions the blocks were easily able to nest seams during construction!
I of course used Aurifil thread and my favorite Schmetz Microtex needles to complete my quilt as well as Hobbs 80/20 Cotton Poly batting. It was a quick and fun quilt that measures 36 inches square and will be a baby gift at some point.
This month the Island Batik Ambassadors are debuting the new collections! I got to play with the new Wild Blooms Collection. It's a spring paradise of floral inspired fabrics that are just gorgeous,
The tool I received was the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star. There are also technique sheets to go with these tools. I choose to do a banded Lemoyne star which means that it has a narrow border around the edge of the star. The instructions on the technique sheet and the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star tool instructions were quite clear. It was easy to use and I was successful right away.
The first step was to pick out fabric combinations for my stars and bands. I decided to use some of the multicolored fabrics as the bands to add sparkle. I then used more "solid" looking batiks for the stars. The funny part is that after I took this picture and cut my strips to make the stars with I totally changed up what I was putting together! It's amazing how different things can look when you have big pieces verses small strips.
Here are my final four star blocks.
I think the band on this block is probably my favorite fabric in the collection. I have a big soft spot for orange.
I had some softer fabrics left that I did not use in the stars that I decided would make a great scrappy square border which I quickly cut with my Accuquilt GO. Once it was all sewn together with my favorite Aurifil thread and Schmetz Microtex needles I layered my quilt with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly blend batting.
My final quilt is a nice baby quilt that will soon be on it's way to a new baby. I hope you love the fabrics and Lemoyne stars as much as I do!
Some of the shops getting this gorgeous fabric are:
Quilter's Quarters, Cottonwood AZ
Fabric Frenzy, Wimberly TX
Hancock's of Paducah, Paducah KY
Kilauea Kreations, Volcano HI
Missouri Star Quilt Company, Hamilton MO
My Very Own Quilt Shop, Park Rapids MN
Red Pine Quilt Shop, Detroit Lakes MN
Seams Sew Perfect, Madison ME
Sew with Me, Lake Elmo MN
Island Batik has a giveaway! Click on the link below to enter. The collections are so GORGEOUS.
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
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