Ready for Take Off - Island Batik Blog Hop and Giveaway

Welcome to my stop in the "A Piece Of..." Blog Hop hosted by Island Batik.

(Read all the way to the end of this blog post for the giveaway).

I named my quilt Ready for Take Off.

The quilt is a modified version of the Flight Plan Quilt by Shannon Fraser Designs.

How appropriate that this passenger plane showed up right after the the picture above was taken, the airport is not very far from where I live.

22 Island Batik ambassadors are participating in this blog hop that started last week, the other half of the ambassadors had their blog hop in August.

The full schedule of the blog hop is HERE.

This is the collection I received in July, Neptune's Friends by Kathy Engle. It is a part of the Summer 2019 collection of Island Batik, and will be available in shops in December. The bundle was kept a secret all this time.

The assignment for the blog hop was to make a quilt lap size or larger, the quilt should feature as many fabrics from the collection as possible.

There were 20 different fabrics in the bundle I received, and I used all of them in addition to solid white batik as the background.

The main design in the Flight Plan Quilt is the triangle in a square unit. Since I own a Tri-Recs ruler, I used the Tri ruler to cut out the triangles from the Neptune's Friends collection, and the Recs ruler to cut the white side triangles. I used fussy cutting to get the most out of the octopus fabric, as shown in the picture above. The ruler makes blocks of the medium size from the pattern, and I saved a lot of time using the ruler instead of using the templates included in the pattern. To make a decent-sized quilt I decided to make more blocks.

I made 96 of the 6.5" triangle-in-a-square units, using all available fabrics. The white batik background calms the design down and enhances the flow of the pattern.

The first layout of the quilt blocks on the floor definitely fits the theme of the blog hop, lots of pieces!

I managed to get almost every point to match in the blocks. 3.5" strips of contrasting fabrics were put in between the triangle-in-a-square blocks.

Our little houseguest behaved very well while I was assembling the blocks, but she just had to sit on the quilt top when I laid it out on the floor.

I started out following the pattern by the letter, but ended up improvising the placement of the block and the strips. Since I wanted a little bigger quilt, I assembled the blocks in columns, added an extra column and extended the length of each column. The quilt top was pieced with Aurifil 50wt in white #2024.

The columns are ready to come together.

I used Hobbs Tuscany Collection 100% Wool batting which gives a nice and warm quilt, it's almost like a duvet! The walking foot was used to quilt horizontal straight lines with Aurifil 50wt #2310, Light Beige. The quilt gets a real modern feel with the straight line quilting.

Neptune's Friends, Scales in Paprika was used for the binding.

As you can see, it was a cold day for the photo shoot. This is a big lake, and the ice had recently started to form in the bays.

I am so happy for having a warm quilt to wrap around me!

Everything freezes over.

The frost creates beautiful decorations!

And see here, another little plane came to greet the Flight Plan Quilt!

When I arrived home I took the quilt with me to my favorite quilt holder, an uprooted tree that looks almost like the (a bit scary) Octopus

from this angle.

My trusted quilt holder is always patient, earlier it acted a Troll, and now it is also doubles an Octopus!

Trees that fall over and get uprooted are not removed from this recreational forest unless they block a path. This one is far from a path, so I hope I will keep my troll/octopus for a very long time!



What about the giveaway?

Island Batik is having a giveaway each week of the blog hop, this week's Island Batik Giveaway  is where you can win a precut bundle of the Sand Bar collection.

My personal giveaway is a stack of twenty 5" squares of Neptune's Friends, one from each of the fabrics in the collection.

To enter my giveaway, please leave me comments below, up to two entries per person. Giveaway will close 11/22/19.
1. Leave any comment
2. My blog followers get an extra entry - Leave me a comment how you follow my blog



My fellow Ambassador Kim also made a quilt using the Neptune's Friends collection: Kim's blog.


Thanks to Island Batik for giving me the the beautiful fabrics to make this quilt. Batting was provided by Hobbs, and thread by Aurifil, -- thank you!



Quilt Stats:
Finished size: 72" square
Island Batik collection: Neptune's Friends, and solid white batik
Pattern: (Modified) Flight Plan Quilt by Shannon Fraser Designs
Batting: Hobbs Tuscany Collection 100% Wool
Thread: Aurifil 50wt, white #2024 for the piecing and Light Beige #2310 for the quilting
Binding: Neptune's Friends 111914365 Scales in Paprika
Backing: IKEA Britten Nummer including a wide stripe of the Octopus and Mermaid fabrics