Saturday, September 21, 2024

National Sew A Jelly Roll Day - Fall Quilt Top


It's National Sew A Jelly Roll Day!

A day devoted to all those jelly rolls, rollie pollies, and strip sets sitting on shelves or in drawers, waiting their turn to become a quilt.




I got a head start and pulled out this Island Batik Pumpkin Patch strip set I have been holding onto for awhile.

I had a plan for it and didn't waste any time!


Check out my YouTube video to see how I made it and how quickly I stitched this top together!



The quilt is made from a simple square in a square block and uses almost every inch of the strip set. 




 I had a little more than 2.5 inches left from each strip, enough to make my own mini charm pack.




 But those little pieces won't sit around long, I've already got them trimmed up for something else!


To make the top, you need 40 strips.  Island Batik strip sets come with 40 strips, which makes them perfect for this project. The top needs 80 blocks and one strip makes two blocks.

To get started, I paired two prints together and cut each strip into:

Four 6.5 x 2.5 inch rectangles  
and
Six 2.5 x 2.5 inch squares.




 I laid out the block pieces in order and swapped the centers with their paired counterparts.




There was lots of chain sewing...




And assembly line ironing.




And it all went together pretty quick.  
The video above breaks down each step into minutes.




The quilt is laid out with 8 blocks across and 10 blocks down and measures 48 x 60 inches, the perfect size to throw over the couch.,






If you have Jelly Rolls decorating your shelves, give this project a try, it's quick and looks fantastic! And with a jelly roll, you know all the fabrics will play well together.



Happy Sewing!


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Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Adventurous Applique Blog Hop




Welcome to week three and day two of the Island Batik Ambassador Adventurous Applique Blog Hop!

Today I'm showing off the Island Batik fabric line called Geometric Symphony by Jerry Khiev,
and at the end of the post, there is info about a giveaway going on at the Island Batik blog and another giveaway on my Instagram page!





Geometric Symphony should be arriving in quilt shops now and is full of beautiful blues, pinks, purples, and light browns.





  Since this challenge was all about raw edge applique, Aurifil sent several spools of thread to match the fabric.






The first and hardest part of this challenge for me was coming up with a design.  I love the look of applique, but I don't do much of it myself so I'll admit I was stumped for a while.  I thought of applique circles to match the fabric and then my mind drifted to triangle flower petals.  I wanted to see what that would look like so I got to cutting.





When I cut out the triangles I wasn't too thrilled with the sharp edges, so I smoothed them out.  I added a smaller print on top and put them all on a light pink Island Batik background. 





The flower centers were cut free hand, no perfect circles here.  I used my Creative Grids 2.5 inch circle ruler as a guide for size, but I let the scissors do as they pleased.





Then it was time to add thread by using the edge color applique method by Fourth and Sixth Designs.    I used a Schmetz universal 90/14 needle.  I thought it would be fun to get a close-up of the needle as it's not often the needle is the star of the photo.










I used a different color thread for each section. Once I had all my blocks ready, I fiddled around with different ideas to pull them all together.




I settled on quarter square triangle sashing.  I paired the Geometric Symphony prints with Pomegranate, one of the Island Batik foundation prints.  Deb Tucker's  Tucker Trimmer Ruler helped trim these into perfect squares.


And then it was time for quilting.




I used Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 Bleached cotton batting. I had two big pieces left over and stitched them together for the perfect fit.









I did a little custom quilting in the sashing and a tight meander in the background of the main blocks.





I used more Aurifl thread for the quilting, a very light purple and a perfect dark pink to match the pomegranate fabric.





This quilt ended up being an interesting combo to me, with the random edges of the petals and circles next to the hard lines of the quarter square triangles.




This is definitely a pink lovers quilt.




Lots of Aurifil colors in this project  The empty spool was navy colored thread.  It had just enough to sew down the largest petals.  The bigger spools on the left are the colors I used for the quilting.






I didn't use much of the browns in the top, so I put them on the back.  I love how these three prints paired up nicely next to each other.





The main blocks are 12 inches and the sashing finished at four inches, making the final measurement 52 x 68 inches.



The quilt has passed Boonky's quality inspection.


Stop by my fellow ambassador's blogs today to see what they made with this fabric line.



And now for the giveaway info!

Check out this Island Batik Blog post to enter their giveaway to win a fat quarter bundle of either Geometric or Floral Fun.  This giveaway ends on September 21. Two random winners will be notified by email on September 22. 



And then head over to my Instagram post to see how you can win one of these Island Batik Strip sets. 
They were provided to me by Missouri Star Quilt Co. as part of their birthday celebration.
 I will pick a winner on Saturday, the 21st as well and send a DM to the winner.





Happy Sewing!


=^..^=



 

Saturday, August 31, 2024

Halloween Chevron Topper


August was all about Marvelous Mini Quilts for Island Batik Ambassadors

I decided to play around with the Mini Ten Wedge ruler by Phillips Fiber Art.  I bought the ruler years ago and this is the pattern that came with the ruler.  I don't think you can get the mini size ruler any more, but you can use the regular Ten Wedge and still make this smaller version.




I needed something festive for Halloween to put on a circular end table, so I pulled out some orange, black, and purple Island Batik Blenders.  




The pattern starts out by sewing strip sets. From there you cut your angles and sew everything together.
Avi and Boonky are always around to give their opinion.




Hobbs Heirloom Fusible batting came in handy for this project.  




Since it was small, I didn't want to quilt it on the longarm, so I used some Hobbs Fusible batting along with my Oliso iron to sandwich everything together.  





 


The batting worked great and I didn't have any puckers on the back.




I quilted it with orange and light purple Auriful threads and used Schmetz 90/14 quilting needle.









The purple thread is showing as gray in the photo, but it looks purple and pretty cool in person.   




Avi and Boonky couldn't wait to test it out for comfort.




The quilt is one inch larger than the challenge size, it came out to be 25 inches across. But it fits on the table perfectly.  






Happy Sewing!


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