Island Batik Ambassadors Adventurous Applique Challenge!

April's Island Batik Ambassadors Challenge is named Adventurous Applique.  As it's the same title as my blog I was quite excited to get started.  I had this gorgeous set of Glowing Embers to play with, so the only limitation in design was keeping the pieces narrower than 2 1/2 inches.

I started with a flower pattern I doodled during one of my son's violin lessons.  I then decided to put a whole set of four in the middle and sets of three in the corners.  If you look carefully all of the flowers in the upper left corners are the same, upper right are the same, etc.  So there are four different colorations of the flowers.

Above you can see the strip of fabric I am going to use for my orange peel style sashing.  Below you can see lines I've drawn with my white Clover Iron off Pen to help put the orange peels in the correct places.

And here it is with all the orange peel pieces added!  Some are 1 inch pieces and some are 1 1/2 in pieces.  

And here's the back once all the stitching has been completed and the stabilizer ripped away.  

And the final quilt!  I decided to add a fat binding since I already had 2 1/2 inch strips.  I created 6 unique free motion filler patterns for this quilt which I have been revealing in my Free Motion Friday posts for the last two weeks and for the coming four weeks.  It's quilted with my favorite Aurifil 50 weight cotton thread.  Be sure to come back and check them out every Friday or join my Machine Applique Adventures Facebook group so you never miss a post!

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Old Building Inspiration

On our way home from Missouri Star Quilt Company we stopped at The Quilted Forest in Forest City, Iowa.  Across the street from it was an old building with some fantastic architectural detail.  Enjoy!

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Tuscany Silk Batting Musings

I love Hobb's Tuscany Silk Batting.  You can read more about it by clicking on the link.

Here's what I had to say about it the last time I posted about batting:

Silk - silk batting is something I started using a year ago as well.  I've found Hobbs Tuscany Silk to be a fabulous alternate to cotton batting.  The batting is 90% silk and 10% polyester.  I find that since the silk is a natural fiber it has the "stickiness" of cotton and lays flat like cotton as well.  I enjoy using it in my quilts.  If I want my design to really puff up, I would not chose silk as it doesn't have the puff of wool that I like.

Now, since then I've learned a couple of new things about the Tuscany Silk Batting I want to share.  The first is that it is slightly tan in color, not dark, just light like their 80/20 batting.  Not a big deal for most quilts, but I wouldn't put a white quilt on top of it as the white seams show through...ask me how I know.  Look carefully at the quilt below.  If you look just around the edge of the the colored ring (This is done is Island Batik's Drizzle Collection...so pretty!) you can see a white line where the seams overlap.  If I'd put this quilt on a white batting this would not be noticeable.

So here's the finished quilting. Can you tell?  Not really, so I didn't and don't worry about it, but it's something to think about when considering batting choices.

And now time for my next discovery.

When I was working my Pocket Watch quilt I used a small piece of silk batting.  This quilt was different for me in that I actually washed it.  I don't always wash the small things I make for this blog when I'm finished (I do prewash ALL of my fabric).  However, all those gears in the background were drawn with a blue wash-out pen and it had to be washed.  

I used my usual method of soaking in cold water, then wringing inside a rolled up towel.  I must admit I did then iron it dry from damp as I wanted to start painting it.  What I discovered when it was dry is that it has an INCREDIBLE drape.  It reminds me of my great-grandmother's quilts that have been used since the sixties with the nice draping cotton batting inside.  I wish you could feel how nice it is though the computer...

I will definitely use this batting again soon!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Free Motion Friday - Pokeballs

My oldest son is totally into Pokemon cards right now.  I was looking at them with him the other day when I realized that the Pokeball would make an interesting quilting pattern...you never know where inspiration is going to come from!

Here's the finished design and a sneak peek of a post coming next week!  (This is the Glowing Embers collection by Island Batik)

Start by making a circle between 3/4 and 1 1/2 inches in diameter.  

Then stitch a small curve, then a circle, and then another small curve to connect to the other side.

Travel back over the outside circle to where you want to start the next one.

Here are a few of them all together.

And the final design in more correct colors....

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Free Motion Quilting Density

Today we're going to talk about density...the amount of space that a pattern fills.  If you look at mini below, you can see that there are four different quilting patterns.  The center has echoed curves.  Then the next round has a variation on bubbles and my light bulbs pattern.  The the outside has echoed curved lines.  You can see how much less dense those outer triangles are. 

Look at the light bulb quilting right next to those loose wavy lines....one is totally flattening the fabric and the other has lots of space.  They are very high contrast which works for my mini.  I don't normally do light bulbs so dense and after this quilt I definitely won't do it again this small!  You can't even tell what they are, so what's the point?

Here is the bubble filler.  It works for such a small space.

And here's a closeup of the curves.  This photo is actually larger than in real life.  Not bad for no marking!

Density is something I think about when planning a quilting design.  Less dense areas tend to show up more when the rest of the quilt is quilted densely which is what I tend to do.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Missouri Star Quilt Company Inspiration

My mother and I and my two children took a road trip to Missouri Star last week.  It was a blast and was very inspiring!  I didn't even make it in all the shops!

Outside Florals...

The amazing lights in Florals.

It had a train....need I say more with two little boys?

They posed!  Amazing.  And so cute!  

Some gorgeousness in the batiks store.  I bought a lot and had a blast.  I even got the first cut off some new Island Batik bolts!

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Island Batik Mini Madness - Part 2

I had such fun making my first Island Batik Mini Madness quilt I took the same block and made a second one with a different layout.  
This time I used the same 80 weight poly thread and a 1/4 inch seam allowance instead of a 1/8 seam allowance.  It worked much better, but it was really bulky.  A reader suggested I wet the seams to pull off the paper.  This is something I definitely will have to try sometime.

Here are a few closeups.  We'll talk more about the quilting later.  

Here are the two quilts made with the same block.  Isn't it amazing how different they turned out?

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy