Inspired by Nature Island Batik Blog Hop - Tropicana Twist

For the past few weeks Island Batik Ambassadors have been showing off their nature inspired creations using the new fabric lines coming out from Island Batik. 

I got to play with Tropicana Twist designed by Kathy Engle.
 These beauties should be hitting your shops in December.

This fabric line reminded me of big bright flowers and tropical beaches. I could see yellow and orange tropical flowers with an array of green leaves, and of course the blues of the ocean. 

It is bright and colorful, right up my alley.

My design started out with a simple drawing with a lot of two and half inch strips. 

But as I played around with layout designs in EQ8 I finally settled on this one. 

 My kids said it looks like a background you would see in Bikini Bottom, the home of SpongeBob Square Pants. 

The flowers were paper pieced. Same for the small leaves, well if you want to call them leaves. 

When I sketched it out it looked like a leaf, but when I sewed it up it looked more like an asterisk. Either way I was already committed so I sewed up 26 of those little asterisk leaves. 

I was taking my time in the beginning of the month paper piecing everything, enjoying the process, and watching the flowers and leaves develop one piece at a time. 

But, the the end of the month was coming closer and I still had a lot of little leaves and a few more flowers to sew.  I timed myself and it took me 20 minutes to sew just one small leaf.

It was definitely time to start chain piecing. I took some time to cut out all the pieces I needed and put them in order to sew. I sewed all of piece one and then moved on to the next numbered piece. It actually shaved off lots time this way. When I chained pieced 14 leaves at once it only took 3 hours. I saved myself about an hour and a half.

As I was sewing them, I realized how practical it was for Henry Ford to come up with the assembly line for production. Sew a piece on all 14, iron all 14, prep for the next piece on all 14, sew the next piece.... Repeat. I didn't realize how much time is used picking up and putting down the rotary cutter each time for each individual piece. If you keep the rotary cutter in your had and cut all 14 at once, you have saved time, and when you are trying to beat the clock, every second counts. 

I quilted an all over flower swirl design using a nice bright yellow Aurifil Thread number 2120 - Canary Yellow.

And of course I used some Hobbs Natural Cotton Batting.  It is some good stuff.

And I don't get far without my Schmetz Needles.  They are my go to needle for everything.  I am still using the microtex needles for these Island Batik projects. They stitch up batiks super nice.

This is a fun quilt lap size quilt.  It measures 48 x 56.

Make sure to visit Vasudha Govindan of Storied Quilts.
 Today she is also showing off her creation using the Tropicana Twist Fabric Line.

And stop by the Island Batik blog for a chance to win these fabulous Island Batik Bundles.

And if you missed any days, make sure to go back and see all the wonderful creations made by my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors as they were inspired by nature with these fabulous fabric collections.

November 9:

Carla Henton, Creatin’ in the Sticks

Jennifer Fulton, Inquiring Quilter

November 10:

Carolina Asmussen, Carolina Asmussen Designs

Denise Looney, For the Love of Geese

November 11:

Janet Yamamoto, Whispers of Yore

Alison Vermilya, Little Bunny Quilts

November 12:

Megan Best, Bestquilter

Jennifer Strauser, Dizzy Quilter

November 16:

Joanne Hart, Unicornharts

Maryellen McAuliffe, Mary Mack Made Mine

Jennifer Thomas, Curlicue Creations

November 17:

Gail Sheppard, Quilting Gail

Mania Hatziioannidi, Mania for Quilts

November 18:

Sharon Riley, Sew Riley Designs

Sandra Walker, mmm! quilts

November 19:

Carol Moellers, Carol Moellers Designs

Emily Leachman, The Darling Dogwood

November 23:

Connie Kauffman, Kauffman Designs

Suzy Webster, Websterquilt

November 24:

Pamela Boatright, PamelaQuilts

Michelle Roberts, Creative Blonde

November 25:

Vasudha Govindan, Storied Quilts

Leah Malasky, Quilted Delights

November 26:

Sally Manke, Sally Manke Fiber Artist

Gail Renna, Quilt Haven Threads

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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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