Ripple

I am always looking for quilt patterns that make good leader & ender projects.  When I saw the youtube tutorial for Missouri Star Quilt Co's Lakeview Terrace, I thought it would be a good one.  I cut lots of blue & green Island Batik scraps into 2 1/2 strips (or partial strips) and cut them down to the right size for the pattern. I used Island Batik's solid gray for the background.

As I was making it, I hoped the blues and greens would look like waves.  Waves = water rippling which made me think of the song Ripple by the Greatful Dead.  I love that song so was glad to continually have it in my head while piecing. So of course I've named this Ripple.

 

Truth be told, I like Jenny's version better than mine.   But it was a great leader and ender and is perfect for leftover bits of jelly roll strips.  I do like these photos, taken at a quilt retreat weekend with my friend Kate last month--we could see the mountains from where we had our sewing machines set up!  It was fabulous.

Rose Arbor, Wonderful World of Color Blog Hop

Joan from Moosestash Quilting is hosting the Wonderful World of Color blog hop this week.  Color is such a fabulous theme!  I think it's really interesting that most people have a favorite color.  Some love the same color their whole lives and others have tastes that change over time. At the start of the school year, my son asked each of his teachers their favorite color.  The art teacher had a very specific answer: coral pink and mint green/turquoise.  I'm using my quilt for this teacher, with what I hope are fabrics close to her favorite colors, as my Wonderful World of Color project.

I used EQ8 to design this and cut all the pieces with my Accuquilt.  It's all Island Batik fabrics--some came from my ambassador boxes, and the others are fabrics I bought from fellow ambassador Maryellen. Maryellen sells Island Batik in her etsy shop and she helped me find fabrics that fit art teacher Ms. R's very specific color palette.  Maryellen suggested the border fabric; I never would have thought to add a border, but it has the darker turquoise and the darker pink in it and is perfect! I had already decided on yellow cornerstones for the sashing and her border suggestion also included yellow. Inspired!

I'm really pleased with how this turned out!  I like the two different blocks together; I'd like to make it again, maybe more scrappy.

Be sure to check out everyone who is featured today on the Wonderful World of Color hop.  And you can see the full list of everyone for the week here. 

 Thursday April 21

Just Sew Quilter

Days Filled With Joy

Selina Quilts

Karrin's Crazy World

The Darling Dogwood --You Are Here!

Beckys Adventures in Quilting and Travel

Sloths from Funky Friends Factory & Island Batik

For April, Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to sew a stuffed toy from the Funky Friends Factory.  Pauline, the brilliance behind the Funky Friends, has a ton of fun animals to choose from, and they all have alliterative names.  I chose Slowpoke the Sloth.

 

There are three people in my house and we all love stuffed animals, so I was pretty sure from the start that I would make three.  I used the Blender Bubbles in Sahara for the body of all three sloths and then each of chose our accent fabric for the face and claws. By using the same body fabric, I hoped they would look like a family.

Fire Monkey named his sloth Slowpoke, though he did not know that was the name of the pattern.  He liked Bubbles in Sprout.

Slowpoke

 

Husband likes ironic names so his sloth is Flash.  This is the only fabric not from the always-available Foundations collection; it is from Citified by Kathy Engle for Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting, and is a beautiful sapphire blue.

Flash

 My sloth is Veronica, for t.v. character Veronica Mars, played by Kristin Bell who is well known to adore sloths.  I absolutely loved the foundation Garnet next to the Sahara Bubbles; both were in my most recent ambassador box and when I saw them together, I knew that would be the combo for my sloth.

Veronica

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Funky Friends Factory, Schmetz, & Aurifil.

I love the size of these sloths, they are quite generous and very huggable.  They weren't easy, per say, but Pauline's instructions are very thorough.  There is also a blog post for each individual animal that show you pictures of the steps and I found the photos extremely helpful, though you do have to remember to still read the pattern, as I did find one or two steps that were important but not really visual, so I needed both.  

I love how these sloths came out! In addition to the beautiful Island Batik fabrics, I used Aurifil thread 2340-Cafe au Lait for all the piecing, it matched the Sahara really well, even in closing up all the openings for stuffing.  Each sloth has 5 openings, so that was 15 places to stitch closed!  I did it while watching Bridgerton on Netflix so all that hand stitching went fast.  For the machine stitching I used a Schmetz microtex chrome needle.  Fire Monkey especially loves the velcro in the claws so it can give you a hug or hang off your arm.  

This is third Funky Friend pattern I've made. I let our sloths hang out with the other Funky Friends I've made that still live at our house, all made with Island Batik fabrics, of course.  The patterns are William Whale and Ollie the Laid Back Owl, though our whales are Celeste and Roderigo and the owl is Orion.  

 

If you want to try sewing soft toys, check out the Funky Friends Factory!  She even has a section on her website of patterns good for beginners.