Jelly Roll Color Wash Quilt

 

This is the Jelly Roll Color Wash Quilt I made this spring, but didn't make a blog post until now. I had this great jelly roll from Island Batik that was perfect for this quilt. It reminds me of a beach sceneary.

Tutorial by Bethanne Nemesh, @bethanne.whitearbor on Instagram.

It is a small throw size of 48" x 57". Silk batting from Hobbs Batting inside, which makes it light weight, yet warm.

I used an old Ikea piece I had in my stash for backing. 

Here's a detailed shot of the organic quilting using the walking foot and Aurifil 50wt Dove thread. The striped binding is the icing on the cake.

Keep on quilting!

 

Elroy Quilt

 Earlier this year I was lucky to be chosen for pattern testing of the Elroy Quilt by Megan of Modern Moon Quilt Studio. I chose to make only four blocks which is perfect for a baby quilt. The simple reason for this was that my nephew and his wife were expecting a baby boy. Now the baby is here and I have sent the quilt to the new owner.

The pattern is a modern geometric design. I used batiks from Island Batik for the front. I love the bright and bold colors!

I quilted it with FMQ in a flame design on my domestic sewing machine using variegated Aurifil thread in color #4652.
 

 The backing is a fun print with birds and leaves, called Birchtree Lane from Connecting Threads. It is a great fabric for the baby boy to focus on when he gets a little bit older.

The quilt went through a wash/dryer cycle which made it nice and cuddly. Perfect for a newborn baby boy!

Keep quilting!

Solstice Sampler 2022

 This quilt is the result of a sew-along hosted by Amber of @alderwoodstudio. I started the first block in October and finished the quilt two days before New Years Eve.

 Nine designers made these wonderful blocks, it was a joy to make them.

The weather late December doesn't always cooperate for a photo shoot, but this day was just perfect!

The quilt consists of nine 18" blocks designed by awesome artists. I enjoyed making all the beautiful blocks.

With a size of 60" square the quilt will be a great addition to my home.

The backing complements the colors on the front.

A closer look of the quilt on my porch.

An indoor picture of the quilt shows the organic quilting I made using Aurifil thread in white #2021. 

I mostly used fabrics from Island Batik for the quilt.

This was a very pleasant quilt-along with a great-looking result!

Keep on quilting!

 

Strip Pieced Jewel Table Runner

 A new year and new projects. I am in a good stream of working my stash off, already. 

 

 This table runner is made from leftover stash from my two years as an ambassador for Island Batik. These batiks in earthy colors are playing well together with the neutral light stripes.

 

 These are the starting strip pieced blocks.

I also get to show off my new ironing board cover.

 

The resulting quilt top after some slicing and sewing, 12" x 36"
 

 Straight line quilting in the light stripes using white Aurifil thread gives a minimalistic design. 

The table runner is made from a tutorial by Connie Kresin, @freemotionbytheriver .

Keep on quilting!

Which Direction in the City?

It shouldn't come as a surprise that I love the color blue. When I was an Island Batik ambassador in 2018 and 2019 I was fortunate enough to get to play with several blue collections. One of them was "London Calling". I have already made a big quilt with these batiks, but there was still more than enough to make a table runner from the beautiful fabric.

This is the pattern I chose; "Which Direction In the City?" by Michelle Marvig of Pieceville.

The design let me play with the whole range of 20+ fabrics in making the modern-looking table runner. I tweaked the design a little bit by making the runner wider and shorter than in the original pattern.

Finished size of the runner is 18" x 44 ". I took it out in the forest on a beautiful spring day for the photo shoot. We still have temperatures below freezing at night, so even in the middle of the day when the wind was blowing we had "sun with teeth" as my husband would say.

 

It was a fairly simple table runner to quilt, mostly echoing the design 1/4" from the piecing seams, but also on the diagonal and horizontal in some stripes.

What gives extra life to the quilting is that I raided my stash of blue Aurifil and used 6 different quilting threads in the stripes.

The runner was finished off with striped binding in navy and white.

Keep on quilting!

Seasonal Runner

This is the latest table runner I have made, the pattern is Seasonal Runner, a free pattern from Art Gallery Fabrics.

 I used fabrics from Island Batik for the top. The cool blues and greens look great towards the solid grey background.

 A progress shot with all the blocks cut and HSTs assembled, with details of the first block.

The runner is quilted with straight lines, using the walking foot in the background and ruler work for the blue/green blocks.

 The binding is a blue batik from Island Batik. Finished size for the runner is 18"x45".

 

Keep on quilting!

 

Sunny Tablerunner

 

 

I got a request for a tablerunner that was quite unusal for me; she wanted a yellow fabric on one side and a leafy green on the other side. I have never made a wholecloth quilt before, this was my first time. 

I had a nice piece of a sunny fabric from Island Batik from my time as an ambassador for them. The print has a lot of swirls in orange on warm yellow background. The fabric just begged for a modern quilt design using the walking foot. I quilted straight lines one inch apart. The thread used is Aurifil 50wt in color #5015. I used Thermore batting from Hobbs Batting in the quilt sandwich, that is the thinnest batting I know, and is perfect for tablerunners. Even though the batting is thin, it can do a great deal for definition!

The backside is a leafy green print also from Island Batik. The binding is another green print that works well with the spring feel of the tablerunner. I used Aurifil 50wt in color #2843 for hand stitching binding to the back.

The yellow side is perfect for Easter, and the green side is more neutral and great for spring.

Keep on quilting!

 

Project Quilting 11.6

The last challenge for Project Quilting this season is Vibrant & Vivacious; use bright colors in wild combinations. Thanks to Trish of QuiltChicken and Kim of Persimon Dreams for organizing this fun challenge.

My project is a little round pincushion. I am "killing two birds with one stone" with this one, it is done as a testing of a pattern for Happy Sew Lucky in addition to an entry in the Project Quilting challenge.

The pattern 'Round Pin Cushion' gives instructions for pin cushions 3", 4" and 5" in diameter. I chose the smallest one, and in the Whirligig design. That required foundation paper piecing, one of my favorites.

With this small size I could use my tiniest, bright Island Batik scraps.

The sides of the pincushion was made with a bright yellow batik. This pincushion will have difficulties hiding in my sewing room!

It was a little bit fiddly attaching the sides to the top due to the small size I decided to make. The next one will definitely be a bit bigger.

As always, the patterns from Happy Sew Lucky are well written.

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!

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