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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