Sea Cookie Sparkle

Welcome to my day on the Tool Craze Blog Hop!  As part of our January boxes, each Island Batik ambassador was sent one of the newest Island Batik collections as well as specialty tool from Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design.  I was sent the beautiful Sea Cookies collection by Kate Colleran of Kate Colleran Designs.  I love the sand dollars, starfish, and other doodles in these fabrics, as well as the bright colors! 

 There were multiple elements to the challenge prompt:

• Use as many of the different prints as possible from your designated collection
• Make at least 30 units using your designated Studio 180 Design tool
• Must contain at least 2 different sizes of units from said tool
• If you have other Studio 180 Design tools, combine them with your assigned tool
  

 

I'm happy to say that I was able to meet all of these challenge elements!  All 20 fabrics from Sea Cookies are in here, each in at least 2 but no more than 3 blocks.  I was sent a coordinating light and dark from Island Batik's always available collection: Celery & Pinecone.  I did use Celery in a few blocks because I felt I need another light for contrast.  I wanted something other than black, white, or gray as the background, but I didn't love the dark green Pinecone as a background for this.  Instead, I substituted Merlot, a different Foundation fabric, as I felt the dark purple would complement the colors in Sea Cookies without being overpowering.  

My tool from Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design was the Corner Pop III tool.  This tool has you "pop" or remove a triangle from the corner, but in a 3 to 1 ratio, meaning it's a long skinny triangle. I admit, I was a little stumped by this unit, so I browsed their Blockbusters.  Blockbusters are blocks made with 1 or more of Deb's tools; they come out with a new free block every month, going back to 2016.  I got great inspiration from all those blocks, but only two featured the Corner Pop III tool.  I ended up combining elements of one of those with elements of another block that caught my eye, and adding some of my own elements to make a new block.  This new block also uses the Diamond Rects tool, the very first Studio 180 tool I owned, meeting another aspect of the challenge.  Here is my test block, made with Island Batik fabrics but not yet cutting into Sea Cookies.

 

test block

Each block involves 8 cuts from the Corner Pop III tool.  (Corner Pop III makes cuts instead of units.)  With 16 blocks, that's 128 cuts with the tool!  I sped waaay past that 30 cuts minimum!  Here are the 16 completed blocks on my design wall at this point.

 

Problem is, all my cuts were the same size, so I needed to think of something to get a second size in.  I decide to do a smaller cut with the tool to get some neat accent diamonds in the middle when the blocks were sewn together.  I only did this second smaller cut with center blocks that would meet together in the center.  This lighter purple is Lavender, also from Island Batik Foundations Basics.  Because of the diamonds from the smaller Corner Pop III cuts and the Diamond Rects tool, I am calling this Sea Cookie Sparkle.

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Studio 180 Design, Aurifil, Hobbs, and Schmetz.   

 

The blue fabric with pink dot flowers is my favorite in the line

Once the top was done, I layered with Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting.  Since there is a wide difference between the dark and light fabrics in this top, I decided to quilt it with Aurifil's monofilament in Smoke, thinking that would be least obtrusive.  I did the piecing with Aurifil 2600 Dove Gray.  I used a Schmetz microtex needle for the piecing and the quilting.  There are a few places in the block where a lot of seams come together at the same point and the Schmetz needle had no trouble sewing through the bulk. 

You can really see the sand dollars in this one!

 

 

Two other Island Batik Ambassadors were also give Sea Cookies to play with.  Be sure to visit them both to see what they made with these beautiful fabrics and their Studio 180 Tool.

Claudia Porter, Create with Claudia
Anorina Morris, Samelia’s Mum

 

Sea Cookies is shipping to stores soon!  Here are some of the shops that have ordered Sea Cookies in the United States:

• Accent Sewing Inc   Murrells Inlet, SC
• Appletree Fabrics   Auburn, MA
• Betty's Quiltery   Rapid City, SD
• Bird in Hand Fabric   Bird in Hand, PA
• Bismarck Sewing & Quilting   Bismark, MD
• Boutique 4 Quilters    West Melbourne, FL
• Cinnamon's   Jacksonville, FL
• D & D Sewing    Plaistow, NH
• Divine Threads   Manlius, NY
• Fab Fabrics   St. George, UT
• Fiberworx   McQueeney, TX
• Gruber's    Isanti, MN
• Handcock's of Paducah   Paducah, KY
• Mulqueen Sewing & Fabric Centers   Mesa, AZ
• Nine Patch Fabrics   Chantilly, VA
• People, Places, & Quilts   Summerville, SC
• Quilted Threads   Henniker, NH
• Quilters Quest   Woodridge, IL
• Sew Jersey   East Hanover, NJ
• Sew With Me   Lake Elmo, MN