Sunny Skies: An Island Batik Christmas in July challenge

Regular readers know that I love my accuquilt Go! fabric cutter.  I bought it several years ago with the main purpose of cutting down scraps into usable sizes.  This month, the Island Batik ambassador challenge is sponsored by Accuquilt.  They sent each ambassador their newly re-released Go! Me cutter and tasked us to make is Christmas in July for someone by using the Go! Me to make a gift for someone.

An unexpected Christmas gift in July is pretty great but Accuquilt took it one step further.  To really make this July Christmas special, we were also to give that lucky recipient the Go! Me cutter!  Truly a gift that keeps on giving!

I chose a woman named Glendel as my recipient.  Glendel & I were both blanketeers for our local Project Linus chapter before it closed.  Glendel went on to create her own group of quilters that meets (pre-Covid) monthly at senior center in a nearby rural community.  Her primary goal for that group is making quilts for girls who have been rescued from sex trafficking.  In addition to making quilts to donate, Glendel frequently creates kits for other volunteers.  I thought the Go! Me would be a great tool for someone making quilt kits regularly.

We agreed that my gift to her would be a quilt ready to donated to a rescued girl.  This measures 42" x 54", a size Glendel asked for.  The Go! Me comes with two dies: half square triangle and quarter square triangle, both for a finished 3" square.  I decided to just use half square triangles and to do a Trip Around the Wolrd style setting.  I used 252 half square triangles for this quilt!  And I didn't even mind, because my favorite part about the HST die is that it cuts off the dog ears, so there is no trimming.  Just stitch your die-cut pieces together, press, and voila!  Perfect HSTs every time!

Center of Sunny Skies

I started with fabrics from the Sunny Side Up collection that were left after the Teddy Bear's Picnic quilt.  I added in any yellow and blue scraps I had in my Island Batik bin, including some blues from Glacier View and some yellows and golds from Flea Market.  The binding is Cobalt in the Foundations Solids collection.  I'm sure that the "correct" way to make this would have been in rows, but with the way my brain works I knew that would result in blocks sewn together wrong and lots of frustration.  So I essentially built it from the center out instead.

slowly building out

I wanted to emphasize the Trip Around the World look so I quilted in straight lines along the diagonal lines created by the HSTs.  I used Aurifil 1135 in the yellow sections and Aurifil 2735 from the Como color builders set in the blue sections.  All stitching was done with a Schmetz microtex chrome needle. For batting, I used Hobbs 80/20 fusible batting for the first time and it was flawless!  Easy to adhere to my quilt top and back and I loved the results!   

I named this Sunny Skies.  The yellow and blue combination make me think of the deep blue of the sky on a sunny day.  I hope this quilt lets someone know that sunny skies are on the horizon.  Thank you, Island Batik and Accuquilt for letting me give someone Sunny Skies!

 

Go! Me in action