Websterquilt

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

100 Days of Scrappy Patchwork Introduction

I've decided to embark on one of those 100 day journeys. Maybe. It might last 100 days. Or it might not. We will see when I run out of scraps (yeah, right), or I run out of patience or the quilt gets too big! Maybe there will be more than one?

I have an overflowing Island Batik scrap bin. So...what to do with it? In the past I have cut all my scraps into 1 1/2" squares or 2 1/2" half square triangles. I wanted to do something different.

I have all three AccuQuilt Qubes that are 5". There are 16 die shapes that can be used together to create blocks. I also have all of them at 8", but many of my scraps are small so I wanted to use a smaller size.

I spent about 4 hours pressing all the pieces. Then cut for 4 hours. I haven't made it through a quarter of the scraps, but, well, I got tired of cutting! And I wanted to sew. I can cut more later as I see what I'm using up first.

I decided on gray for my background. I cut lots of the different shapes in sets of 4 or 8. I'm a symmetrical girl at heart and knew I needed to have an even amount of pieces.

Now it was time to play! And it was such fun picking out this first block.

I started with the yellow center square. Then I added the green and purple print. Then the big purple triangles and finally some yellow and red in the corners (yes, that's a really light yellow).

I then had fun sewing it into it's finished block!

What fun! Time to go pick out another block! This is going to be fun.

I hope you get to quilt today.

Suzy

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Alabama Beauty Accuquilt Die and Patterns!

Accuquilt has a new die for the Alabama Beauty block! I designed two of the patterns that go with this beautiful curved pieced block that you can get on the Accuquilt website. These quilts of course are make with beautiful Island Batik fabrics.

The first quilt is called Modern Alabama. Who knew this pattern could look modern?

The second quilt is Spring in Alabama. It was a really fun project to use up scraps.

I was amazed at how easily these curved blocks went together!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Island Batik Ambassador's It's In The Bag Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors are teaming with byannie.com to create bags! I love when we get to create bags. This year I selected the Switchback pattern and used fabrics from the gorgeous Baroque collection from Island Batik.

Here is the kit I received in my Island Batik Ambassador box with all the needed materials for my bag.

Here is the front flap all complete! It's a good think I have tons of colors of Aurifil thread so I could match the threads to the fabric.

When the directions call for you to remove the zipper stop I get my husband involved. Thanks honey!

For the top of the strap I decided to add some decorative stitching to hold down the edge because the wrinkles were driving me crazy.

By Annie's has great Add On Videos for this pattern which really helped me with the tricky steps.

Look at all the amazing pockets on the inside!

This bag can also be worn as a backpack which is most likely how I will choose to wear it.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Monday, September 12, 2022

Island Batik Ambassador's Tool Talk Blog Hop

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors are showcasing new collections by using Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design tools!

For this month's challenge I was sent the Cheers! Collection by Carl and Linda Sullivan of Colourwerx. It is a fun assortment of drink inspired prints. I think my favorites are the lemon slides and ice cubes. This collection made me so excited I made a queen sized quilt!

When I saw the great gradations in this collection I knew I wanted to play with that somehow in my quilt design. I did add in a few Island Batik foundations fabrics to help complete the color arcs. It was easy peasy to cut all those squares for the blocks using my Accuquilt GO! and my 2 1/2" strip cutter die.

Here is the warm arc:

Here is the cool arc:

For my Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Tool I received the Square Squared tool which makes gorgeous square in a square units.

I started by cutting my center square using the ruler:

And then used the ruler again to square up my blocks. This worked slick as it left exactly 1/4" of seam allowance on the outside of the blue points which made sewing the units into the finished blocks really easy.

All squared up and ready to put into the block!

I the proceeded to make all my blocks and put the top together. I really wanted the Square Squared units to pop and I'm really happy with how it turned out. They sparkle when set with those gradation blocks. This quilt has my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting inside and was stitched with Aurifil threads and Schmetz Microtex needles which slide through batik like butter!

I also had a lot of fun quilting it.

Island Batik is giving away two fat quarter bundles this week! One is Cheers! and the other is Honeycomb.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Friday, August 12, 2022

Island Batik Ambassador's Marvelous Minis Challenge

This month's Island Batik Ambassador Challenge was to create a miniature quilt! I love to make minis when I am playing with an idea or want to try a new technique.

I adore the work of Audrey Esarey of Cotton and Bourbon. She has a whole series of radial quilts that are just gorgeous. I've wanted to come up with one of my own for a while and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it.

I started by drafting a circle in Electric Quilt. I then played with colors to make it a bit more modern and surprising. You can see in the picture that for some of the segments I pre-pieced them so they were easier to paper piece. It worked okay, but I need to figure out how to align them to the paper more precisely next time. I was also very careful to label each paper with the proper colors so they came out correctly.

Now it was time to quilt! I marked my straight lines with a white Clover iron off pen and then went digging through my Aurifil thread collection to find the perfect shades.

I wanted to do something a little different in the middle of the circle. I though about continuing all the lines to that point, but then the quilt tends to get a dimple from all the threads and I didn't want that to happen. So I picked one color (navy) to continue all the way through and skipped the others. Instead I added some 1/4 inch lines which I used to guide my stitching.

I ended up deciding to use those quarter inch lines as guides for strings of bubbles instead of quilting them as straight lines. I like the way it turned out. I used my favorite Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting and Schmetz Microtex Needles to do the quilting. You can see that the navy line is thicker. This is because I went over it twice to add emphasis.

Here is my finished 12" mini! I'm calling it Micro Radial. It was super fun and I can see myself making more mini radials in the future.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Be sure to see what the other Ambassadors are creating this month.

Brenda Alburl ~ Songbird Designs

Megan Best ~ Bestquilter

Pamela Boatright ~ Pamelaquilts

Elizabeth DeCroos ~ Epida Studio

Jennifer Fulton ~ Inquiring Quilter

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~ M ania for quilts

Jane Hauprich ~ Stitch By Stitch Custom Quilting

Reed Johnson ~ Blue Bear Quilts

Connie Kauffman ~ Kauffman Designs

Emily Leachman ~ The Darling Dogwood

Denise Looney ~ For The Love Of Geese

Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights

Maryellen McAuliffe ~ Mary Mack Made Mine

Anorina Morris – sameliasmum.com

Lisa Pickering ~ Lisa’s Quilting Passion

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

Sandra Starley ~ Textile Time Travels

Jennifer Thomas ~ Curlicue Creations

Suzy Webster ~ Websterquilt

Monday, July 25, 2022

2022 Island Batik Ambassador's Box 2 Reveal!

Check out my video to see all the amazing goodies from Island Batik, Accuquilt, Studio 180, ByAnnie, and Hobbs Batting!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Friday, July 22, 2022

Island Batik Ambassador's Christmas in July with AccuQuilt Challenge

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors have partnered with AccuQuilt to use the Tree of Life die in any way we chose. They encouraged us to be creative.

Looking at my quilt you are probably wondering where the tree is. And you're right. I definitely didn't use it in the traditional way. If you look at the image of the finished block below do you see those odd shaped white pieces to the left and right of the trunk of the tree? Those were the pieces that intrigued me because they were different. Not square, not triangular.

Okay, so what piece is this? Piece G and shown below. I realized that if I added a few H pieces I could get a nice half square triangle and then make two of those into squares. Hmm....

The next step was to get on my computer and draw this in Electric Quilt to figure out exactly what that looked like.

I considered this design for awhile, but decided against it.

Then I realized I could make a star!

Why gray and red? I'm not sure. I love red and it's sort of Christmasy, but not totally and could be used year around.

I had a lot of fun quilting my project. On those strange G shapes I did a bunch of continuous curve arcs to fill the space.

I also quilted loops on the black in the center because the fabric looks like loops.

Gray Island Batik solid went on the back and it's fun to see how the quilting shows up. This quilt was quilted with Aurifil thread using Hobbs Heirloom wool batting and Schmetz Microtex Needles. I love how the batting gives the feathers around the edge a lot of poof.

Accuquilt requested that we give our quilt to someone who needed some Joy in their life. My friend him has been so helpful with teaching me to garden during the course of the pandemic and I wanted to bring Joy to her! She was thrilled!