Charity Quilt for December

This fun quilt in a star pattern is made from a tutorial by Diary of a Quilter. The finished size is 40" square. It is freemotion quilted with a Stars and Loops design.

The backing is pieced from two 1 meter cuts; I cut a strip of 12.5" off the blue fabric, added a green 6.5" strip and sewed the strips together. Then I turned the fabric 90 degrees and did the same slice technique over again. This creates an interesting design on the back.

This is my charity quilt number fifteen for the year, and number 44 all time for the children's ward at the hospital.

Play Ball - Island Batik 3D Challenge

The December 2019 Island Batik challenge was to bring 3D into the project by any method of your choice, any size. Here is my Geometric Ball With Stars, a foundation paper pieced pattern designed by Quilt Art Design.

This challenge will be my last as an Island Batik ambassador. I have very much enjoyed my two years as an ambassador with all the fun projects we have been doing. I have learned a lot, and challenged myself several times. I decided not to reapply for 2020, I want to focus on my own projects for the coming years.

Thanks to Island Batik for all the wonderful fabrics I was able to play with, Aurifil for the great thread, Hobbs Batting for wonderful batting, and last but not least AccuQuilt for their awesome fabric cutter.

Several ideas popped into my head when I saw the 3D assignment in the beginning of this year, but when this pattern became available in September I knew I just had to make it.

Foundation paper piecing has become a favorite of mine, and I just love to see all the pieces come together to form the final product. This specific pattern really spoke out to me, and I knew I had the perfect fabric for it.

The blues are all leftovers from the London Calling collection from 2018. The different shades of the stars give life and depth to the ball. The white and grey solid batiks together with an intermediate neutral are perfect for creating an optical illusion of a round ball that you can almost pick up from the salmon colored background.

I knew that one layer of batting was not enough for me for this project, I had to add an extra layer. The bottom layer was Hobbs Heirloom Cotton Batting with Scrim, and on top I put Hobbs Tuscany 100% Wool. That gave an extra loft to the ball. My goal was to quilt a dense design in the salmon colored background, to make the ball really pop out.

I used the walking foot to quilt around the white and gray squares of the ball, using Aurifil 40wt Dove #2600. I wanted to let the squares shine as they were, with no extra quilting to flatten them.

In the picture above the stars are not quilted yet, but I decided to add hand quilting 12wt in Teal #2815 in all the stars.

The background was quilted by free motion in a dense geometrical pattern with Aurifil 28wt in Antique Rose #2430.

The quilt is 20" square, and I added hanging corners on the back. The backing fabric is a neutral batik that shows off the quilting in a nice way, both the one by hand and machine.

Aurifil 50wt White #2024 was used for piecing the quilt, and in the bobbin for all the quilting. One of the darker blues from the London Calling collection was used for the binding.

This concludes my two years as an Ambassador for Island Batik. I have had a great time and thanks for the opportunity!

Second Charity Quilt in November

I made a second charity quilt in November, this time I cut blocks using my AccuQuilt Go cutter. I also added solid blocks in a variegated fabric that almost looks like a summer sky. A fun blue print adds life and size to the quilt.

I used a grey solid for binding. The finished size of the quilt is 48" x 64".

This is my charity quilt number fourteen for the year, and number 43 all time for the children's ward at the hospital.

Winner of my giveaway!

The winner of my giveaway from the Blog Hop is  comment #10: Anna Brown

Congratulations Anna!

E-mail is sent.

New Favorite Pouch

A couple of days ago I took a deep-dive into my selvage bin and admired all the great designs. The selvages are way too pretty to be put in the trash, so I decided to make a pouch from them.

I started out by sewing selvages on a base of home decor fabric, this provides extra stiffness to the piece. Two panels were made, and they were cut to size using the Open Wide Pouch pattern by Anna Graham of Noodlehead.

The pattern used is the medium size of the pouch. Dark blue (almost black) denim was used for the bottom. A red zipper is a nice contrast.

I used dark red home decor fabric for the lining. This adds to the sturdiness of the pouch.

This will definitely become my new favorite pouch, great to stuff with sewing supplies and take along to guild meetings and sew-alongs.

Keep on sewing!

Aurifil DOM Block November

This month's Aurifil Designer of the Month, Jenni Smith, has designed this cute Poppy block.

I made my version in different reds from my stash.

Keep on sewing!

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

Charity Quilt for November

My charity quilt for November is made from 4.5" squares of vintage-looking fabrics where the main fabric features Petite Odile by French General for ModaFabrics.

I cut 142 squares of the available fabrics with my AccuquiltGo! cutter with very little waste, and ended up using 140 of them in the quilt. Simple crosshatch quilting adds to the vintage look.

It was a grey, snow-filled day for the photo shoot, the first day of real snow this season.

I added a fun strip of teddy bears to the striped fabric on the backing for interest. The binding is a striped fabric that matches the colors on the front.

Finished size is approximately 40"x56".

This is my charity quilt number thirteen for the year, and number 42 all time for the children's ward at the hospital.

Keep on quilting!

A PIECE OF Blog Hop

It is time for a new Island Batik Ambassador Blog Hop!

November is here, and that means the last Island Batik Blog Hop for 2019 is due. Twenty-two Island Batik Ambassadors will be sharing projects every week using their “surprise” fabric bundle.

I have been working on creating my entry the last month, and can hardly wait to show off the resulting quilt. Come back on my day November 13th to see what I made. I am sharing the Blog Hop day with the Uber Talented Kim Lapacek, better known as Persimon Dreams.

Here's the Full Schedule for the Blog Hop, it starts on Monday November 4th.


In the mean time, keep on quilting!

Sunday Cleaning

Have you cleaned your sewing machine lately? Being inspired by other bloggers I decided to remove the bottom cover of my Necchi and clean it out.

I regularly clean the bobbin area, but haven't opened the bottom plate before. This is what I found, Yikes!!! Look at all the lint that has accumulated over the years!

The inner works is full of little grey rabbits! It really needs a good spa treatment, and I can do a lot myself.

I used the sewing machine brush and got it all out. Now the sewing machine should have a much better performance than before.

This is a treatment that most of you can do yourself, there is a lot of lint accumulating in your sewing machine over time.

I will definitely do this regularly, once or twice a year should be appropriate, in addition to a good bobbin clean out after each project is completed.

Keep on quilting!