I was sent a lovely bundle of River Valley designed for Deb Tucker’s Studio 180 Design by Kathy Engle. It should be hitting shops this month. Island Batik was very generous to send so much for small home decor projects. That means there is some left over to share, but I'll talk more about that near the end. :)
First up I want to show off these two pillows. I love the look of Cathedral Windows quilts and knew this was a good way to show off these fabrics. There are lots of tutorials on line about how to make these types if Cathedral Windows and one of my favorites is from Diary of a Quilt Maven called Faux Cathedral Windows Pincushion Tutorial. The tutorial is for a small pincushion, but it is the same concept if you want to go a little bigger. I like her tutorial because it shows how to use tiny dots of basting glue to hold your white folded triangles down. It works so well I skip her step 5 where she says to sew all around the edges of each covered square. Instead I let the glue do its work and start sewing squares together.
Other than the outer border and the back, the whole project is made from 2.5 inch squares. My pillow is 6 x 6 squares. For each square I needed two white squares folded in half on the diagonal. I used the foundation by Island Batik called Whip Cream for this. I have 36 River Valley blues hiding underneath those 72 white triangles.
Next I laid out all the greens on top. I glue basted these down as well. It made it so much easier to roll back the bias edge of the white and machine stitch them down.
I used Roxanne's Glue Baste It. It's my favorite. It dries quick and doesn't bother the needle when sewing.
Since I used the blue squares underneath, when I roll back the white, all the blues peak out.
Here is the back side before I trimmed off the greens and added the back side of the pillow. I pressed all my seams open.
I got to wondering what the pillow would look like with the green underneath and the blue on top, so I decided why not make another one and see.
These are the blues glued down ready for the green to peak out.
I added a 1 inch border around the block so it would fit perfect around a 14 inch Pillow form.
Here they are, almost twins but not quite.
For my mini quilt scene, The name River Valley and all the blues and greens in this line had me thinking about birds on the river.
Early this year I bought a 4in x 9in Table Top Tri-Stand from Calla Lilly Quilts in Greensboro, NC. They had a cute display with several patterns for every season from Quiltricks.com that fit perfect in the frame. I went to the Quiltricks website to find a bird pattern for the frame, but they didn't have one yet, so I drew up my own.
A white bird with green feathers enjoying the river water among the cat tails.
I drew all the shapes and then copied then onto some HeatNBond, pressed that on the fabric, and cut out each shape easily. Some of the pieces are thin so I couldn't really do a satin stitch around each piece, so I sewed a straight line around them using several different colors of Aurfil Thread for a raw applique. The only pieces that are not part of the River Valley line are the orange I cut from some other Island Batik scraps and the cat tails. They cat tails came from leftovers from the Cascadia line. Doesn't' that brown with blue strips go perfect!
These little mini quilts are the perfect size to use up scrap batting.
I used Hobbs Natural cotton batting leftover from my Lily Patch Pads quilt.
I used Hobbs Natural cotton batting leftover from my Lily Patch Pads quilt.
Now it is time to talk about sharing.
I have two giveaways to tell you about today. First, Island Batik is giving away TWO Fat Quarter River Valley Packs,
I have two giveaways to tell you about today. First, Island Batik is giving away TWO Fat Quarter River Valley Packs,
You can enter on their blog or use the Rafflecopter below.
Second, I am made two charm packs from the leftovers and am giving them away to one of my followers on Instagram.
Check me out on Instagram on @quilteddelights and look for this photo below to enter.
And be sure to visit Sandra Walker to see what she made with River Valley.
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