Island Batik Ambassador's Byannie Challenge

I love making By Annie bags!  Her directions are superb and her materials are great to work with!

 

I chose to make the Open Wide 2.0 bag in the largest size.  I love that it stands up and is huge.  I also picked this pattern because it has Add On videos.  Annie shows you the trickiest parts!  It is really helpful to me as I am a novice bag maker.

I chose these gorgeous fabrics from Island Batik!  The light lavender is called Opalescence and is one of my favorite of their foundations fabrics.  I adore the peacock fabric for the main body of the bag. 

Here is my bag "in the wild" while I was sewing during my son's birthday party with his friends.

Check out how much space there is inside this bag!  It is currently holding my newest Island Batik project's pieces.  And I love the inner mesh pockets for holding notions or pattern directions.

I have used this bag so much and I'm already planning another. 

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Passionflower Quilt Part 3 - The Flower Beginning

The flowers for this quilt have ten petals and I knew I wanted them to be somewhat organic instead of perfectly symmetrical.  I cut some out of white paper first to determine size and placement.  The first silk I tried frayed a lot and just didn't work, so I switched over to a radiance fabric (half silk, half cotton) and it worked perfectly.

 Final placement before applique.

Stitching complete.  

If you've ever looked at passionflowers, you know they have these amazing purple tendrils.  I decided the easiest way to create this feature of the flower would be to add paint.  I pulled out my favorite Lumiere metallic paints and went to work.  I love how they turned out.

All three flowers painted.

If you look closely at passionflower tendrils they appear striped.  I didn't want to try to paint that so I decided to add silver metallic rhinestuds to the final project to get the effect.

Believe it or not there's even more in the center of these flowers.  Stay tuned!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Passionflower Quilt Part 2 - The Leaves

 It's time for the leaves!  

To figure out placement I used some construction paper and printer paper to figure out where to put my flowers and leaves.  I knew I wanted an odd number of flowers because it's more pleasing to have an odd number.

In trying to decide what fabric to use for the leaves I figured out quickly that it needed to contrast well with the background.  I decided on a darker blue-green color for this reason.  And what fabric is it?  Taffeta.  Yes, you read that right.  It's shimmery and fun and slippery, but it worked well.  

I started with some Appliquick fusible and created my shapes which I fused to the back of the taffeta.  That is if taffeta has a back as it's hard to tell!

I used my Appliquik tools to turn the edge and then quickly ironed the glue dry so the fabric wouldn't move.

Slow but steady progress.

One beautiful finished leaf.  Only 8 more to go!

Here's what the back looks like.

I added a layer of stabilizer behind the leaf and then did a double blanket stitch around it's edge.

To reduce bulk I cut away behind the leaf.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Passionflower Quilt Part 1 - The Background

I love the passionflower.  If you've never seen one before Google it.  They are very unique.  I decided to create my passionflowers on a trellis like background.  In order to do this I made wonky four patches.  The light colors are all specialty fabrics: velvet, silk, satin, etc.  The greens are all batiks.  I then sewed them together to form my trellis.  I added a satin stop border (never again....it ravels so) and a green outer border.

Squares all cut ready to make my wonky four patches.  You can see that I varied my lights from white to cream to blush to gray.  The greens also vary in tone and value.

First square complete!

Laying out the first few blocks to see what it looked like.  Yes, I currently have leftover John Deere flannel as my ironing board cover.

Here you can see me arranging blocks on my design wall.

This is the second larger top.  What I had planned for this one didn't pan out.  So it is waiting patiently for the day I do figure out what to put on it!

Stay tuned for more posts about this quilt in the days to come!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Island Batik Ambassador's Try a Tool Blog Hop

This month the Island Batik Ambassador's got to play with new collections and Deb Tucker's Studio 180 tools.

I received the Split Rects tool to try.  I have always loved this particular quilt unit, but have had a hard time getting them to turn out as nicely as I would like.  This tool solved that problem!  I was astounded with how well it worked and it will definitely be used again soon.

My new collection for this blog hop is called Free to Fly by Kathy Engle and features butterflies!

The included directions with my Split Rects tool were great and I had no trouble figuring out how to use the tool properly.  Here I am cutting my beautiful Island Batiks!

Over 200 Split Rects units ready for assembly!  Sewn with Schmetz Microtex Needles of course.

Here's a few peeks at the quilting done with my favorite Aurifil thread and Hobbs 80/20 batting.  I had fun making a feather design in the dark green area.

I wanted to unite these two different green fabrics so I made another spray of feathers in their combined area.

The large orange areas near the corners also got feather sprays.  This fabric is a combination of yellow and orange and it's interesting how the yellow stands out more because the area was quilted in yellow thread.

The finished project!  It needs a name....feel free to leave an idea in the comments!

Island Batik is giving away two precuts this week as part of the Try a Tool Blog Hop!  To enter click here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Follow my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors for maximum quilting inspiration, here:

Megan Best ~

Bestquilter

Pamela Boatright ~

Pamelaquilts

Elizabeth DeCroos ~

Epida Studio

Jennifer Eubank ~ Archipelago Quilting

Jennifer Fulton ~

The Inquiring Quilter

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Joanne Hart ~

Unicorn Harts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~

Mania for quilts

Jane Hauprich - Stitch By Stitch Custom Quilting

Connie Kauffman

~ Kauffman Designs

Emily Leachman ~

The Darling Dogwood

Denise Looney ~

For The Love Of Geese

Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights

Sally Manke ~

Sally Manke, Fiber Artist

Maryellen McAuliffe ~

Mary Mack Made Mine

Claudia Porter ~

Create with Claudia

Gail Renna ~

Quilt Haven Threads

Brianna Roberts ~

Sew Cute And Quirky

Michelle Roberts ~

Creative Blonde

Gail Sheppard ~

Quilting Gail

Andi Stanfield ~

True Blue Quilts

Jennifer Thomas ~

CurliCue Creations

Suzy Webster

~ WebsterQuilt

Janet Yamamoto ~

Whispers of Yore

Island Batik Ambassador's Never Too Early Challenge

It's time for Christmas in July!  This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to create a project fit for an end of the year celebration.  I chose Christmas and decided to play around with red and green scraps.  

I recently received the new 4 inch Qube from Accuquilt and I'd been dying to try it out.  So I made one big block for the center using my 8 inch Qube and then four half blocks to go around the edges using my 4 inch Qube.  It is a wonderful addition to the Accuquilt Qubes!  It works like a charm.  I was amazed how well those tiny blocks turned out!  They were pieced using my favorite Microtex Needles from Schmetz.

The trickiest part of this project for me was figuring out how to quilt all the white space in this quilt.  I decided to make strings of beads with pine needles like extensions coming out on both sides of them.  I really like the way it turned out using my favorite Aurifil Thread of course and Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting.

In the green areas I quilted a ribbon like motif and in the red I did a simple continuous curve.

For the outside white I decided to quilt a mostly circular string of beads and then continue the pine needle extensions even though some of them were going to be really long.  I'm thrilled with the way it turned out!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Follow my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors for maximum quilting inspiration, here:

Megan Best ~

Bestquilter

Pamela Boatright ~

Pamelaquilts

Elizabeth DeCroos ~

Epida Studio

Jennifer Eubank ~ Archipelago Quilting

Jennifer Fulton ~

The Inquiring Quilter

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Joanne Hart ~

Unicorn Harts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~

Mania for quilts

Jane Hauprich - Stitch By Stitch Custom Quilting

Connie Kauffman

~ Kauffman Designs

Emily Leachman ~

The Darling Dogwood

Denise Looney ~

For The Love Of Geese

Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights

Sally Manke ~

Sally Manke, Fiber Artist

Maryellen McAuliffe ~

Mary Mack Made Mine

Claudia Porter ~

Create with Claudia

Gail Renna ~

Quilt Haven Threads

Brianna Roberts ~

Sew Cute And Quirky

Michelle Roberts ~

Creative Blonde

Gail Sheppard ~

Quilting Gail

Andi Stanfield ~

True Blue Quilts

Jennifer Thomas ~

CurliCue Creations

Suzy Webster

~ WebsterQuilt

Janet Yamamoto ~

Whispers of Yore