Friday, June 24, 2022

Here Comes the Sun Blog Hop



Welcome to the last day of the Here Comes the Sun Blog Hop hosted by Carol of Just Let Me Quilt.
I've sure enjoyed seeing everyone's creations.  If you missed any, you can find the whole blog hop list at the bottom of the post.





The challenge for this blog hop was Summer and Sunshine.

We were challenged to sew something that has a summer theme like: sunglasses, beach items, sunny skies, and/or yellow colors. It could be a quilt, a bag, a toy, or whatever we wanted it to be.



I went with yellow and lots of it!
I even threw in some orange and reds for hot summer sun colors.



I had snatched up these Island Batik color strip packs from Missouri Star a bit ago when they went on sale and this was the perfect hop to use them.





Half of each pack makes a whole lot of four patches!  I didn't even use them all for this quilt.  When I first started, I had no clue where this project was going.  I was just sewing four patches.

As I was sewing the four patches I felt like I needed something pointy for sun rays, so I added the red triangle in a square blocks along with some orange half square triangles and ended up creating the quilt I have now.  



The other red, white, and orange prints are left overs from my other Island Batik Ambassador projects and from my personal Island Batik Stash.  It was fun to play with these colors of the sun.  

I quilted it with Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80/20 Bleached Cotton/Poly Blend.  I like using the white batting when I have lots of white in the quilt top.





The back is older fabric from my stash.  I really like piecing my backs.  Helps me clear out the stash!





I am calling this one Summer Sun.  It measures approximately 64 inch square.





Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Island Batik New York Beauty Blog Hop - Winter Wonders



Welcome to week three, day three of the Island Batik New York Beauty Blog hop!





Today I am showing off my creation using the new Island Batik Winter Wonders fabric line by Kathy Engle and I have info on two give a ways at the end of the post!



These are beautiful festive prints hitting stores now, just in time for Christmas in July!
I started with four different New York Beauty blocks and picked fabrics for each section as I went along.




Switching from green to red to tan.  It was fun to cut and sew and not really worry about what was going where. They all play so well together!





 I sewed the blocks in sets of four.  Four patterns, four different color variations for each one.




Choosing a layout was fun.  I could have turned the blocks so many different ways.  There were so many different combinations, but four circles ended up winning the vote here, so that is what I went with.





I added some sashing blocks between the New York Beauty blocks and for the outer border.



For the backing I used a red print from the Island Batik Foundation collection called Scarlet. The strips in the middle are all from the Winder Wonders collection.




I quilted it with with Hobbs Heirloom Premium Cotton Batting and Schmetz Chrome Microtex Needles.






It quilted up fantastic.




I never would have guessed I would have a project ready before Christmas in July.
It sure feels good to have a new Christmas quilt done early! Lol!




Now for my Giveaway!  

I used almost the entire half yard bundle I received for this project, but I did have enough left over to make a couple stash builder roles and cut 100 mini charms.  If your interested  in winning these, leave a comment below and I will Pick a winner this weekend after the blog hop.

**WINNER UPDATE**

Congratulations GranChris! The random number generator picked your comment! You won my little giveaway! I sent you an email.


**WINNER UPDATE**






Island Batik is also having a giveaway.  

They are giving two people a chance to win a Fat Quarter bundle of fabric from the complete Island Batik collections featured this week – Tranquility by Deb Tucker’s Studio 180 Design or Woodblock Bouquets, designed for Carol Moellers Designs by Kathy Engle!





To enter for your chance to win these gorgeous batiks, please follow the easy-to-use prompts on Rafflecopter!

Check out the Island Batik blog for all the new fabric lines coming out and all the Island Batik Ambassadors showing off their New York Beauty Quilts.










Happy Sewing!


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Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Triangle Tricks with Island Batik


The May Challenge for Island Batik Ambassadors is Triangle Tricks.  We were challenged to get out of our comfort zone and play around with triangles. Well, that was good news for me because triangles are totally in my comfort zone!





I love working with triangles! They create so many different fun patterns. The challenge for me was trying to figure out what triangles I wanted to use! To make it easy I decided to use several different sizes and shapes of triangles in my project. 






I wanted something a little scrappy so I opened up some of these cute blue stash builders. Each roll has four 5 inch strips x WOF and there are 5 rolls per bundle; so 20 prints. There is a lot of fabric in these little bundles and lots of variety in prints. I ended up using three full rolls for this little quilt plus some background fabric. 




For the cutting I used the Accuquilt go cutter. I love cutting triangles with these dies. They always come out accurate and sew up so nice with the notches helping everything line up.  And the dog ears are already cut off! Can't beat that.




I ran 12 different prints through the machine with different triangle dies.





I used the 3 inch finished HST, the 1.5 inch finished HST, and the 3 in finished Square in a Square. 



No fabric was wasted on these. That left over fabric at the top of these cuts was perfect for my four patch squares.



The white background is one of my favorite Island Batik Foundation prints called Sprinkles.
I ran that through the die cutter as well. 




I cut out the blue triangle parts of the flying Geese by hand. After that I went to look on the Accuquilt site to see if they had a die for 1.5 x 3 inch flying Geese and they do! They sell it in a combo: The 1.5 HST and the 3 in QST.  I actually have both dies! Doh! I used the 1.5 HST for the white part, but it didn't dawn on me to use the 3 in QST die for the blue geese triangles. I'll have to spend more time on the Accuquilt site looking for other combos and ideas for future projects.


Out of all my blocks the Geese came out just a wee bit wonky.  Again, that's why I love these dies for cutting triangles. I do way less fudging when I use them.  Everything sews up so smooth.




I pieced the quilt using some leftover white Auriful Thread from one of my other quilting projects and quilted it with Hobbs Premium Heirloom Batting.







And as always it was sewn and quilted with Schmetz Needles. I love their chrome microtex needles. They are perfect for Island Batik fabrics.





This quilt is a small blue version of a Faceted Jewel quilt. It measures 42 inch square and the triangles in a square help give the illusion of circles.  Oh how these triangles play tricks and pretend to be curves. 




Happy Sewing!


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Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Picnic Quilt - Foodie Blog Hop

 Welcome to day two of the Foodie Blog Hop hosted by Carla of Creatin in the Sticks!




When I first signed up for the hop I had envisioned a taco themed quilt with lots of triangles but then the taco fabric I ordered ended up not coming. It was out of stock...bummer.  On to plan B.  But I didn't have plan B, so I started thinking...




Last year one of my sons said he wanted a picnic quilt. I asked him what a picnic quilt looks like. He said it can look like anything, just something to take on a picnic.  I explained to him the life cycle of quilt and that most picnic quilts, which are usually laid on the ground, have already lived a long useful life before they become picnic quilts.  He said he wanted a new quilt, he didn't want to wait for its life cycle to become a picnic quilt.  So I got to work on a new picnic quilt.




I had been wanting to make this particular Diamond Irish Chain quilt for awhile and I figured it would be perfect for a picnic quilt.  I showed my son a picture and asked if this would qualify and he agreed it would but he wanted it to be a bit bigger.  The photo I showed him was a smaller quilt.  This one measures 67 inch square, big enough for two people to sit on.




This version uses "left overs". Perfect for a foodie blog hop.
I pulled out scraps from both my bright and neutral fabrics, and whipped up something delicious.




The large half square triangles are pretty big and make a 9 inch diamond block and the center nine patches in the chain blocks are three inches!  I love tiny pieces! Lots of fun playing with big and little scraps for this one.




And for the back I had the perfect picnic fabric, Hot Dogs and Pizza!




My son's favorite color is orange so I used orange strips to fill out the rest of the back and the green strips help bring out the relish on the hotdogs and peppers on the pizza.




Waiting on the taco fabric that never came put me a little behind, so I didn't quite have enough time to quilt this one, but it is almost ready to go.  Just need to get the batting ready and get it on the frame!



Thanks for stopping by and make sure to visit all the other bloggers showing off their Foodie creations today!




Happy Sewing!


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Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Wonderful World of Color Blog Hop

 


Welcome! It's day three of the wonderful World of Color Blog Hop and today I'm showing off some colorful Wonky Hearts.




This wonky heart die from Accuquilt is perfect for 10 inch squares and my Island Batik Ambassador box came with the perfect stack of Island Batik Contempo - by Kathy Engle for Kate Colleran Designs LLC.




These hearts sewed up super quick.  
The longest part was deciding which colors to pair with each other.





I really like the look of all the hearts together without sashing, but then quilt would have been super small.  The blocks come out to 6 inch finished.






So I fiddled with some sashing.  I used the Island Batik foundation print called Heavenly.  At first I cut a 2.5 inch strip, but I wasn't quite feeling it...





So I took off an inch and made it smaller... much better.





For the outer border I used the Island Batik Foundation called Twilight.




For the back I used another Island Batik foundation print called Ivy in Tourmaline with a strip of left over Island Batik Butterfly print running down the middle.




This quilt is loaded with color from front to back.




I quilted it with yellow thread.  It popped just right on everything.





Be sure to hop on over to the other blogs check out all the other creations today!