Island Batik Quilt Modern Blog Hop

Welcome to day two of the Island Batik Quilt Modern Blog Hop. 

Today I get to show off my Mountain Rain quilt I made with the new Island Batik fabric line called Forecast by Ebony Love of Love Bug Studios. It should be hitting shops this month! 

When I got this stack of weather themed prints all I could think of was rain on mountains, so I drew an abstract a pattern and sewed it up. 

Good old graph paper for the win!

I wanted two different kinds of rain. Diamond rain and long straight rain.

For the diamonds, I used the Diamond Recs tool by Studio 180 Designs.

I really like this tool. It cuts the center diamond perfect and the outer edges just a wee bit bigger than needed and then you trim it down to a perfect rectangle. 

The mountains and the clouds were improve paper piecing, sort of. I drew the shapes right then on paper then sewed them out. There was definitely some improve piecing in between the rain and the mountains to get everything to come together. That should qualify as modern, right? I hope so. Either way, it was a fun project to work on and I used every fabric in the Forecast bundle for this quilt.

This one was quilted with Hobbs Premium Polyester. batting  I quilted all over wavy lines and it tuned out so soft and fluffy.

I used White Aurifil Thread for the quilting on this one. Since the dark prints also have some light in them the white blended perfectly.

And of course I used a Schmetz needle. They always have the perfect needle for my projects.

Make sure to check out my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors Joan Hart of Unicornharts to see what she created with Forecast.

Happy Sewing! And May the 4th be with you!!

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Three Zipper Pouches

 

A quick finish,  three zipper pouches.

After I was done making my Island Batik Bargello placemats in January I had this small strip piece left over and wanted to use it up.  It was about 21 inches long. I figured I could cut it down and get two zipper pouches out of it. 

There are lots of cute zipper pouch tutorials on the web, but I used the one by Jedi Craft Girl. I like the way she adds the zippers with fabric on the ends.

I did alter her dimensions a bit though to fit my 21 inch strip. Her tutorial calls for a 9 x 6.5 inch piece for the outer fabric, I cut mine 9.5 x 5.25 to use up the whole strip without any leftovers.

I had to cut three strips off each section to get to 9.5 inches wide. That left me with 4 little sections of three inch strips.  I realized if I combined them I could have two more front sections with six strips each.

So I sewed those together and got enough sets to make three pouches.

They turned out a little shorter than most pouches since I altered the height by over an inch, but they are perfect size for colored pencils or make up.

I added a little pull tab on two of them. After I sewed the first one without it I felt they needed one.

I added some cute charms on the zippers for fun.

These were quick to sew up and used leftovers that normally sit for years waiting to be turned into something else.

It was also nice to work on a quick finish in between some of my larger quilt projects. 

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Black and White Half Square Triangle Baby Quilt

 

My Nieces Baby shower was this weekend.  She is having a boy and the baby's room is black and white, so I put together a little black and white quilt for the baby.

I ordered some cute black and white fabric with critters on it and mixed it with some other black prints from my stash. This was a quick pattern and looks fantastic.  It only takes 100 half square triangles and some small borders.  If you cut the print with the white at the same time it makes for easy lining up and quick sewing.

Chain piecing is the way to go when you have 100 half square triangles.  I finished the top in one day.  Faster than it took for the cute black and white animal prints to arrive at my door.

When I ordered the backing fabric I only paid attention to the animals: the sleeping foxes, bear, and dear.  When it  arrived I noticed the tents.  Super cute!

I quilted straight lines in all the white.

and meandered in all the black.

The binding came from the same fabric line.  It looks like black and white stripes, but it is actually white tree trunks on a black background.. Too cute!

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IBA April Project - Summer Breeze I and II

This month, Island Batik Ambassador's got to make what ever they wanted.  Sometimes having no theme is harder because there are so many choices to choose from and narrowing it down to one is so hard!

I decided to stick with making quilts and some quick quilts at that.  Sometimes you just need a quick finish.  These two quilts were just that.  Well, they were until I decided to custom quilt them.  It ended up taking longer to quilt them than it did to sew the tops together, but it was worth it.  I love how they came out.

In my January Island Batik Ambassador box I was given a whole half yard bundle of Summer Fields collection designed by Kathy Engle.  I used most of the half yard bundle for the blog hop we did on February,  but I had some big strips left over and decided to use it up. 

These fabrics shipped to stores in February this year. You can probably still get some in your local shops.   

I had enough fabric left over to to cut two 2.5 inch strips of each print using my Accuquilt cutter and the 2.5 inch strip die.  I used to have my reservations about the 2.5 strip die, I felt I could cut those strips faster myself, but I was wrong. It was so nice to put six layers on and roll it right through.  They came out just as fast as I could cut and didn't have any bowed strips.  Super nice.

 I also cut out an equal amount of Island Batik background fabric, Moo Milk, which was also given to me in my Island Batik Box.  Moo Milk is a slightly off white foundation print you can get all the time.  I decided to combine the prints and the Moo Milk to make a strip tube quilt. 

There are so many different variations and strip sizes you can use to come up with totally different strip tube patterns, but the one I went with was based on the tutorial from MSQC called Summer in the Park. You can watch the video to get a visual on how to make the tube and how to cut it. You can also search strip tube quilt patterns on YouTube and get all kinds of different ideas.

Basically, for this one, I sewed three strips together.  The first set has two prints and one background.  The other set has two backgrounds and one print. Then I sewed those two strips together on both sides creating a tube.

I cut the tube into triangles using my 45 degree ruler and when I opened the triangles I had Square blocks.   It's pretty fun to see them all come together.  

 

I had enough strips to make two quilts. The first one is bordered with a lovely Island Batik blue from the Summer Fields Collection. 

The second version has a green border. I used a green from my personal Island Batik stash for this one.  It is a tortoise shell print from the Magical Reef collection that came out in fall of 2019.  It plays perfect with Summer fields and pulls out the darker green prints of the line.

I used the last of my yellow Aurifil thread for the quilting.  It blended perfectly on all the prints.

And of course, pieced and quilted it with a Schmetz Needle.

 

I already trimmed it off in the photo, but I used Hobbs Heirloom Natural Cotton batting for both quilts. It quilted up so nice and fluffy.

 

The quilting is similar on both quilts,

These strip tube quilts go together so fast and look pretty fancy.

I am naming these two Summer Breeze I and II.  

I took them to the State Park to get some pictures, but it sure was windy down at the beach.

I ended up getting them to stay straight when we got away from the ocean and into the wooded area of the park.

They did sit nice for me on this bench though.

Happy quilting!

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We Support You - UFO Finished!

 It feels good to finish a UFO! This project was started as part of a blog hop in February of 2015. You can read the original post HERE.

What caused this one to be delayed for so long was the applique. I needed to stitch it down and that always seemed like a "chore" so I kept putting it at the bottom of my to do list.

Some UFOs you forget about but this one was always in the back of my mind begging me to finish it, after all I had a recipient I wanted to give it to.  What finally put a fire under me was an opportunity to save $20 in shipping.  My son is flying out in a couple weeks for school and his Aunt will pick him up.  The quilt is for her. So to save on shipping,  I planned to put it in his suitcase.

That gave me a deadline. The quilt had to be finished before April 16. So at the end of March I pulled it out of the box where it was safely stored and got to work sewing down the applique. It wasn't as painful as I thought it was going to be.  I broke it up into two days and even sewed on another quilt inbetween.  

Once everything was stitched down I got to quilting. I usually load my quilts longways on the frame so I don't have to roll it as much so I did the same with this one, but after I started the quilting I realized it would have been easier to loaded it the other way. That way I could have quilted one whole row without rolling it. Lesson learned for the future. 

I like the way the quilting turned out. I quilted what ever struck me at the moment. Swirls, feathers, and even some pebbles. Was good practice for the designs I still feel uncomfortable with. When they get thrown in with everything else it looked pretty good. Couldn't even tell I was practicing.

It feels good to have this finished and ready for gifting! Happy Quilting!

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