Thread Painting with Auriful and Island Batik

Phew, this was a hard challenge for me this month. I love quilting thread and really enjoy the quilting part of quilt making, but I don't consider myself a thread painter. I racked my brain all month trying to come up with an idea. I tried to come up with something original on my own but had a serious creative block.  I think it was the fear of painting a photo with thread that really had my creative juices at a stand still.

So I started looking at  patterns created by others, but nothing jumped out at me to go along with Thread Painting.  It was really coming down to the wire.  By Monday Oct 26, I still hadn't picked out a pattern! It was the last week of the month and I had no project ideas to go with all the fantastic colors of 50 weight Aurifil thread I was sent.  

Finally inspiration struck in an odd way. I was cleaning out my email and came across an email I had been saving from Robynie Patterns.

It was an email notification about her new Toucan pattern. My thread colors have always been on my mind and when I saw that toucan again along with all the background space I knew this was it! I bought the pattern and got stitching right away!

I googled some images of toucans and this guy was perfect!  He matched all my threads, so I tried to copy his coloring.

I knew I was running low on time, so I used all my spare time before and after work and pieced this guy together.

I still hadn't seen him from the front till I sewed the last seam.  So when I turned him around I was pretty excited.  He looked so beautiful and colorful.

I grabbed all the Aurifil thread I was sent in my second ambassador box along with a black and got to work with the "Thread Painting", which for me was really heavy custom quilting.  

    Since this was a small project, I was able to use a scrap of Hobbs Heirloom batting I had left over from another ambassador project.

I ended up swapping out some of the threads as I quilted and ended up using seven different Aurifil colors to quilt up Mr. Toucan.

2692 - Black

2545 - Medium Purple

2535 - Magenta

2335 - Light Cinnamon

2120 - Canary

1148 - Light Jade

1231 - Spring Green

For the fabrics, I used a lot of left over Island Batik scraps and some Island Batik foundation yardage:

Petal Sunshine - Yellow Feathers

Apple - Top of the Beach

Leaf Vine - Nasturtium - Bottom of the beak

Marble Charcoal - The black feathers

Surf - Light blue in the beak and the feet

Sahara - The tree branch.

Sprinkles - The background  - one of my favorite Island Batik Neutrals.

The rest of the fabrics were pulled from my Island Batik Scrap Bin.

For the quilting I randomly added flowers to the background in canary and magenta.  

Then I filled in the rest of the background with spring green.  Quilting was a breeze using Schmetz Micro needles.  They are perfect for the thicker Island Batik fabrics.

Aurfil threads seem to have a slight shine to them and their colors are so bright and vibrant.  They look so beautiful next the the Island Batik fabric

Not quite a thread painting, but definitely more quilting than usual to show off all those wonderful colorful Aurifil threads.

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From the Heart Blog Hop

 

Welcome to day three and the final day of the From the Heart Blog Hop,
hosted by Carol of Just Let Me Quilt.

It has been fun seeing the inspirational gift ideas these past couple days and today I am adding these jewelry pouches to the list and I will be Giving two of them away!! More about that at the end.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart to those of you who always come back to see what I'm up to.

I have made these before as gifts. They are quick to sew up and fun to make out of different fabrics.

When I first made these years ago I used a pattern from Quilting Art Gifts Magazine from 2009, but there are several tutorials online you can use if you are itching to make one. The tutorials differ slightly in dimensions, but when sewn up they all look pretty similar. 

Here are a few links to some tutorials I found:

Sew4home.com - Drawsting 8 pocket Jewely Pouch

Sewfrench = Jewelry Pouch

Melanie Kham - Travel Jewely Pouch

You can also find some good tutorials on You Tube.  Just search Jewelry Pouch Tutorial

When I decided to make the jewelry pouch the plan was to only make one, but when I pulled out the main floral fabric there was only about 3/4 of a yard left so I decided to use up as much as I could.

I was able to get enough big circles and enough small circles to make three pouches. 

 That left a small amount of fabric that I folded up and put with my scraps.

For the lining fabric, I decided to go with three different colors: purple, teal, and green, making them all similar yet different .

I have a special someone in mind to give the teal one to, but if you liked to have the purple or green lined pouch leave a comment below. I am going to give one away here and one on my Instagram feed: @quilteddelights 
So if you want two chances to win visit both places.

I will pick a winner at random Sunday Nov 1.

*Winner Update*

Random Generator picked comment #17

Congrats Tink's Mom!

Check out the other hoppers for more hand crafted gift giving inspiration.  

The whole schedule is listed below.

October 26

Creatin' in the Sticks

Ms P Designs USA

Becky’s Adventures in Quilting and Travel

Websterquilt

Selina Quilts

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Quilting Gail

Scrapdash

Ridge Top Quilt

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

That Fabric Feeling

Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting

 October 27

MooseStashQuilting

Just Because Quilts

Day Brook Designs

Karen's Korner

Quilt Schmilt

Kathy's Kwilts and More

Karrin’s Crazy World

Words & Stitches

Vroomans Quilts

Sew Many Yarns

Songbird Designs

Samelia's Mum

 October 28

Just Let Me Quilt

Quiltscapes

Beaquilter

Seams To Be Sew

Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life

Bumbleberry Stitches

Days Filled With Joy

Quilted Delights  (me)

Den Syende Himmel

Life in the Scrapatch

Storied Quilts

Kathleen McMusing

Food for Thought

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It's in the Bag - Island Batik Blog Hop

Welcome to my day of the hop! For this blog hop, Island Batik Ambassadors are showing off new Island Batik fabrics lines hitting shops now or heading that way super quick and to show them off this month were were challenged to make bags! And not just any bags. Bags by byAnnie.

I got to choose the bag pattern I wanted to make and Annie graciously sent all the items needed to make it. I was super excited for this project.

I chose the Divide and Conquer pattern because I was really wanted to make those mesh pockets on the inside and also thought it would be fun to have a cool quilted over night bag.

To make the bag, I was sent three fabrics from the Mandala Magic collection by Jackie Kunkel of Canton Village Quilt Works. Check out all the prints in this line, each one is fabulous! 

This pattern comes with an add on video, which I highly recommend watching. It helps oodles when trying to make this bag. Particularly on nights when your tired and the words on the pattern start to blur. The videos are your new best friends.

When I first picked the pattern I didn't think about all the work that would go into this bag. Later when I watched the ad on videos and saw all the steps and tough parts, I thought, "What did I get myself into!" But in the video at one point Annie tells you to take a break if you need to and to take it slow. Best advice ever, specially for those tough binding sections.

At some points I thought this bag would conquer me, but I came out victorious and it was worth it. I do have some boo boos in this but they will stay. My major boo boo happened when I started putting the bag together. After I made all the pieces for the bag I was so excited to sew the bag pieces together, that I didn't realize I sewed the mesh pocket on the back side of one of the vinyl pockets, so the zipper is on the inside of the pocket.... ugh.

While I was making it, I didn't think anything of it because I could open and close the zipper the whole time, that is until I put the front panel on and then I realized what I had one....oh boy, I wasn't about to take all that out. I can still open the zipper though so I am good.

The saying measure twice, cut once should go along with double check your layout twice before sewing. Haha! Even with my boonked up zipper placement the bag still looks fantastic and I have a one of a kind over night bag.

I used a nice peach Aurifil thread and a nice bright purple to put all this together with.

And of course a schmetz needle. I only broke one needle during this whole project, and it wasn't even when I was sewing through all the layers. By a fluke I hit the teeth on the vinyl zipper in just the right spot and snap, the needed was a goner. My machine and needle handled everything else super nice. It even went through all the layers of everything no problem. Of course, I did go super slow as suggested in the videos.

Check out all the patterns at byAnnie, and her supplies. I really liked using the zippers by the yard. They were fun and easy to work with. 

Go visit Connie today too to see her Mandala Magic bag.

You can also check out all the other bags being made for the hop by stopping by the Island Batik Blog. Also this week Island Batik is giving a chance for someone to win their lovely Island Batik fabrics. Use the Rafflecopter to enter. If the Rafflecopeter is not working on my site, you can enter on the Island Batik Blog site as well. It is the same Rafflecopter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy Sewing!

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The Economy Quilt

When I was making my Snails Squared quilt, I made some boo boo's and cut the wrong color fabric for the wrong sections. This left me with some extra triangles just floating around. 

Well, I didn't want these triangles to get lost in the scrap pile so I decided to make a baby sized quilt using 6 inch economy blocks and the rest of the 10 inch precut of William's Garden, an Island Batik signature collection by Kathy Engle for Deb Tucker of Studio 180 Design.  Precuts are available now, yardage is coming September/October.

I wanted at least 30 blocks, 5 across and 6 down, to get a usable sized quilt, so I had to get a little creative with my piecing Since I had used some parts of several squares from the precut in my previous quilt. I ended up sewing two smaller pieces together to get all the triangles I needed.

Some went together perfect...Have to be really searching to find them.

others ... You can definitely see the two pieces if your looking close.

Once all the squares and triangles were cut it was time for chain piecing. 

By chain piecing and using the Square Squared ruler from Studio 180 Design  I was able to sew these thirty blocks together in one evening.  The Technique Sheet for the Square Squared ruler shows you how to easily make Economy Blocks.

I originally wanted to butt all the blocks next to each other, I love that look, but then the quilt would have been super small at 30 in x 36 in. 

So I sampled some sashing and took a vote with family and friends. 

To Sash or not to Sash? That was the question.

Sashing won, 100%.

The Sashing finished at 1 1/2 inches making the quilt 39 in x 46.5 inches.

This was a nice size as I didn't have to piece the backing and could use a 45 inch wide piece of fabric.

Another good thing about this one being so small is that it quilted up super fast. It was getting close to bedtime and I had just thrown in a load of laundry and needed something to do while I waited, so I put this one on the quilt frame and it was done before the laundry. 

I quilted and an allover design of swirls and curves using 50 wt Aurifil Thread number 1148 Light Jade.  The Light Jade looks perfect over the green, blue, and purple fabrics.

I had the perfect size scrap of Hobbs Heirloom Natural Cotton Batting for this one. I am telling you the stars aligned perfect for me to finish this one up so quick.

And as always, I used a Schmetz Needle. The Microtex needles that came in my latest Ambassador box have been wonderful with the Island Batik fabric.

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