Wednesday, May 22, 2024

The Forest - Quilt Pattern

I love this quilt so much and I am excited to be releasing the pattern today!

It's called The Forest and is in my shop now!


The quilt was made with fabric from the Island Batik Fabric line called The Grove, a signature line by Kathy Engle for Quilters’ Treasure Chest.



How fun are these greens mixed with crystal blues.  When I saw these fabrics I immediately thought of a tree lined creek stream and and had to come up with a way to get that into fabric.





The trees in the quilt are made with foundation paper piecing.
It is a good design for someone just starting out with paper piecing as the shapes are fairly simple.

The pattern itself does not have instructions on how to paper piece, but if you are new to paper piecing, there are a lot of free resources on the internet to help get you started. 

I even have a quick tutorial on how I paper piece under my Tutorials section.




And if you are not quite ready to tackle paper piecing, you can cut out the shapes from the paper piecing pattern and use them as templates, just be sure to add 1/4 inch seam allowance all the way around.





The pattern has colorful graphics that help you lay out the gradient blue streams easily.


And just like the pattern I released Monday, Midnight Crossing, the PDF pattern will be on sale for the rest of May!


 If you are shop owner and want hard copies for your store, shoot me a message.


Be sure to come back Friday to see the final pattern coming out this week.


Happy Sewing!


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Monday, May 20, 2024

Midnight Crossing - Quilt Pattern


This week I am excited to be introducing three new patterns for sale! One today, one on Wednesday,  and one on Friday!

Each one coincidences with one of the new Island Batik fabric lines coming out right now.




First up today is Midnight Crossing. This pattern was designed to showcase the Bootiful fabric line, a signature Island Batik collection by Kathy Engle for Quilting Renditions.





It's not too early to start on a fun Halloween project!




I love fun Halloween fabrics and was excited to be able to design something out of these fantastic purple, green, orange, and black prints.

And the white print with black trees on it turned out to be the perfect background print.




The quilt is made of two alternating blocks, which in turn create a fun secondary pattern.




The quilt is sewn together using traditional piecing. 
Templates are included for cutting the diamond and triangle pieces.


You can buy the PDF version of the pattern in my shop today, and to celebrate it's new lease, it will be on sale on sale for the rest if May! 

 If your a shop owner and want hard copies for your store, shoot me a message.




Be sure to check back Wednesday and Friday to see the next two patterns coming out.






Happy Sewing!


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Monday, May 13, 2024

Paper Pieced Celebrations Blog Hop




Today starts week two of the Island Batik Ambassadors Paper Pieced Celebrations Blog Hop and I am showing off "Frog Eyes", my newest quilt using the Lavandin fabric line.





Lavandin is an original Island Batik collection by Claudia Pfeil




When I received it in my ambassador box, I wasn't sure what celebration it could go with.




I was loving the teals and purples, but the greens were throwing me off a bit.  It wasn't till I looked up lesser known holidays that I became inspired.  

I learned that May 13th is National Frog Jumping Day.  




It's amazing what celebration you can find for each day of the year. There are a few other lesser know celebrations going on today, but for me, this one matches the fabric colors perfectly.  The greens symbolize the frogs and the purple and teals represent the water and the lily pads frogs play on.  Once I had my celebration I got to sewing!

  The design reminded me of colorful frog eyes peeking out of the water at me.  A whole swamp full of frogs.  I can even hear them croaking at me as the sun goes down.




This quilt is made up of 48 blocks.  Each block is a half square triangle, and each triangle has fourteen pieces in it.  When I have paper piecing projects like this, I like to assembly line sew and turn on a good show or music to listen to in the background.

I sew all pieces 1 and 2 together for each block, press, trim, and then move on to piece three.




Everything gets lined up in a row for cutting, usually as many as fit across the cutting mat: Layout five, trim, clear, layout five more...  It's a nice system for me when sewing a lot of the same block.





I do press between each piece, and the new Oliso Iron that came in my Ambassador box is great for this.  The iron gets nice and hot which helps my pieces lay flat ready for the next section




Avi was taking his inspection duties seriously this time.  




He also enjoyed the Hobbs Heirloom Natural cotton batting I used for the inside.  He tried several times to sit on it once I took it out of the bag.  This batting made the quilt super soft and quilted up beautifully.




I used a light green Aurifil thread for the quilting.  It wasn't too bright for the darker colors and added a wee bit of color to the tan Island Batik Blender fabrics I used for the background.





Avi was trying hard to get up and take a nap as soon as I had everything loaded up on the long arm. 
He was sure I had just made the perfect kitty hammock.




Everything quilted up nicely with a Schemtz 80/12 microtex needle.  





Again the thread and needle combo were perfect.  No thread breakage at all for me.









The paper piecing really helped me get nice points on the odd angled diamonds and the half square triangle chains.




I love how these prints play so well together!




I took the quilt to the park around the block.  It was a lovely day with a perfect spring breeze.  While I was there I did see ten turtles sitting on a log, but no frogs.





Surely the black swamp water has a plethora of frogs waiting for the jumping games to begin!




The quilt Measures 60 in x 78 in.

To honor the holiday, I am going to read the short story that started it all, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain.


And if you want to make your own Frog Eye Quilt, click on the image below for the paper piecing pattern for the two triangles, A and B, that when sewn together create one block.
A and B make look similar, but they are mirror images of the diamond shapes.

To make the same quilt you will need 48 blocks total.  6 blocks across and 8 down.
The blocks measure 9 inches finished.  





Be sure to check out the Island Batik Blog to enter this week's giveaway!


You can also enter using the Rafflecopter below.








Be sure visit my fellow Ambassadors who also had this same fabric line today and see what they are celebrating!






Happy Sewing!


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Saturday, May 11, 2024

Reflections Blog Hop



Welcome to my day on the Reflections Blog Tour hosted by Jennifer of The Inquiring Quilter.







This blog tour showcases the Reflections fabric line, an Island Batik signature collection by Kathy Engle for Jennifer.





Jennifer sent me a lovely stack of fabrics to play with and I couldn't wait to cut into them. 




I wanted to make a quilt with fairly easy piecing yet still have it look very striking. I went with half rectangles and half square triangles.




The main block is a 5-inch square cut from Island Batik solid black. It is the sashing and cornerstones that do all the work to create the stars.

The sashing is the 2.5 in x 5in Half Rectangle blocks and the cornerstones are black and purple 2.5 inch squares.  The half square triangles finish out the corners.




I had the perfect variegated Aurifil thread in my stash for this project. It matched perfectly with the colors of the fabrics and I knew the heavier weight thread would look fantastic against the black fabric.




I love, love, love this thread! It's so fun!



The heavier thread didn't even break once in my machine.  I followed the needle and bobbin thread guidelines on the Aurifil website for sewing with 40 weight thread and didn't have any issues.

I used a 90/14 Schmetz microtex needle and it worked fantastic. 




Be sure to head over to Jennifer's blog if you haven't already, she is giving away a fat quarter bundle of the Reflections fabric line. 




And if you are on Instagram, check out my post on May 15th for even more goodies to win during the Reflections Instagram Loop. There will be several of us having giveaways from May 15th-17th.





Later this month, Jennifer is also hosting the Broken Road Quilt along to make the quilt below.
Click the photo for more info.





Below is a list of all the blogs participating in the Tour.  Make sure to check them all out!





Happy Sewing!


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