Island Batik Ambassador Scrapbuster Challenge

 

I had a lot of fun with this month's Island Batik challenge.  Going through all my different Island Batik scraps is always fun and always full of color.  This month I turned my leftover scraps into a Hunter's Star Quilt. 

 This is the first time I have made this type of quilt and I used the Accuquilt Hunter Star die to help me cut everything out.  I like this die as it cuts out all the shapes with one pass and cuts off all the dog ears at the same time.  

  I needed a strip about 4 inches wide to cover the cutouts on the die.  So I went through my leftover Island Batik Scraps and pulled out every scrap piece 4 to 5 inches wide and started cutting.

I also cut some 4 inch strips of Island Batik black solid for the contrasting half of the block.  I love bright colors on a black background.  So pretty!

There are lots of pieces in this quilt. 960 to be exact.

I decided to make the Star sections scrappy, so each star has 4 different colored fabrics. 

The colorful parts that make the stars are attached to the black contrasting section so I randomly grabbed two different colors for each strip and got to sewing. 

Once I had all all the colored triangles sewn together I put them on the design wall and tried to spread out the colors a bit.  I wanted the quilt to have a scrappy look, but I also didn't want all the pinks on one side.  There are some colors touching, but I tried to avoid the same print touching.  Which wasn't too hard as there are lots of different prints.

Then I turned all the triangles in the right direction to form the stars.  It looks cool with the white spaces in-between.  Could be a whole other quilt design.

Then I added the black counterparts and "oohed" and "aahed" over it for a bit before sewing the triangles together into squares.

Loving how those colors pop against the black.

The triangle halves went together nicely. Again it helps to have perfectly cut pieces.

Sewing the rows.

Look at this kitty. I had the top all finished and back on the design wall measuring it for the borders and he decided he didn't like it up there.  In one jump he launched himself into the middle of the design board, hung there for a bit, then used his paw to grab the top and pulled the whole thing off the wall. Then he sat right in the middle of it. Crazy cat.

I broke out the black Hobbs Batting for this one.  I really like the black batting, its just fun to see it on the frame behind the quilt and it hides all the stray black threads that get stuck under the lighter prints. It's quilts up beautifully.

Lots of in the ditch quilting in this one,  I went around each piece.

I played around with what to quilt in each triangle section, but eventually found my groove after the first row.  I used black thread on the black and a light green in all the colors and of course used a Schmetz Needle.

Trying out different quilt poses.

In this one I get to show off the quilt and  my neighbors blossoming azaleas.

Yay for Spring!

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Green Jelly Roll Race

Jelly Roll Race Quilts are fun and quick to sew up.

After cutting forty two different  2.5 inch strips from my stash I sewed up the top in about an hour and a half.  Normally these are made with pre cut jelly rolls, but I did not have a green Jelly Roll that would work well.  I had one, but it only had eight different fabrics, 5 strips each of print.  The eight prints are pretty, but they wouldn't make a very diverse quilt so I created my own set of green strips.a

Even the white squares have light green dots in them.

 

I quilted it with some green thread.  I started out with a meander but then added some leaves and wavy lines and what ever else struck my fancy.

I pieced the back with more green.  This quilt is definitely made for someone who loves green!

Happy Quilting!

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Jeff's T-shirt Quilt

This quilt was a long time in the making.  I was given the shirts several years ago and finally got them together in 2020.  My husband (on the right) is always telling me to put names on people's quilts.  Usually he means embroider them on the quilt top somewhere, but an embroidered name didn't seam to fit this quilt, so I pieced the name in big yellow letters at the top.  It was the perfect way to top off off all these school sport t-shirts.  

It took me a little fiddling to come out with the layout.  Not every shirt is the same height or width.  I didn't want to cut out any of the logos on the shirts so they came out different sizes.

I had to add a couple extra pieces of t-shirt material to make all the rows the same length but everything finally came together.  I added a thing black border to tie everything together.  

After I was corona free, I delivered it to its new owner in February.  He was very excited to get it and is going to hang it up in his office at school.

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