Welcome to my stop on Island Batik's Pieced to Perfection blog hop! Our challenge was to use our assigned collection and any form of paper piecing to create a lap size or larger quilt. I absolutely LOVE English Lavender and was thrilled to have received this gorgeous collection by Kathy Engle.
But. They don't call them challenges for nothing. I do not enjoy paper piecing. I know how to do it but I don't like; it takes me a really long time, my brain gets really mixed up, and I always make a lot of mistakes. I do enjoy English paper piecing (EPP) but only for small projects, and there was no way I had enough time to do a large quilt with EPP. The size was a problem even for standard paper piecing, as I didn't have a huge amount of time from when I received the fabric to when my project was due and paper piecing takes me a lot longer than traditional piecing. So I tried to come up with a way to paper piece that I could do a fairly large project and not curse it the entire time.
Materials used in this project were given to me by Island Batik, Aurifil, Hobbs, and Schmetz.
When I think of paper piecing, I think of sewing on the lines and trimming and matching and flipping and all this stuff that my brain struggles with. But there are also more and more foundation papers on the market, where you do stitch with paper and fabric, but you use the paper more as a platform for stitching and/or trimming and there isn't all the flipping and such that confuses me. So I looked around at some options and found Triangles on a Roll from It's Sew Emma (Fat Quarter Shop). You lay out the paper on the right size strip, pin in place, stitch on the dotted lines, then trim on the solid lines and presto! Half Square Triangles of your chosen size, no trimming needed. This would work! It met the paper piecing/foundation piecing requirement without me losing my mind.
Next step was to pick a pattern with lots of half square triangles. I have been playing with some designs using the classic Carpenter's Star or Carpenter's Wheel block. Each block needs 40 half square triangles. I liked a 3 x 3 layout, so that meant 360 half square triangles! Plenty of foundation piecing! The final quilt measures 56" square.
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| Piles of Triangles! |
I used 18 of the 20 fabrics in the English Lavender collection. I also used Navy in the blocks and Pearl as the background; both are from the Basics Foundations collection and are always available. Fun fact: we are sent 2 different 2-yard cuts that coordinate with each collection in our boxes. One of my collections earlier in the year was matched with Pearl and Harbor. Clearly someone in the warehouse had fun with fabrics & names. 🙂
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| All those papers, removed |
I used Aurifil thread 2562 Lilac for the quilting. I chose diagonal organic way lines that followed the lines of the blocks. I chose a Cotton & Wool blend batting from Hobbs' Tuscany Collection. I love this batting! It gives such a lovely texture and definition to the quilting! Schmetz needles are always my needle of choice; Kimberly Jolly of It's Sew Emma and Fat Quarter shop recommends a size 90 topstitch needle for the triangles on a roll, so that's what I used. Schmetz needles make going through the fabric and the paper so easy!
This collection is such a beautiful representation of my favorite color combination of blue and purple! English Lavender pre-cuts are in stores now and yardage is shipping soon. Here are a few shops in the US that already have English Garden in 2 1/2" strip packs or 10" stacks.
A& J Sewing Studio -- Morgantown, WV
Bill's Sewing Machine Company -- Hildebran, NC
Bird In Hand Fabric -- Bird In Hand, PA
Creations Quilt Shop -- Clouquet, MN
Laural's Fabric and More -- Lino Lakes, MN
Mary Mack Made Mine -- Franklin Square, NY
Quilt Cottage Co -- Hays, KS
Quilter's Cove -- Newport, OR
What's a Blog Hop without Giveaways?! For 2" finished HSTs, I needed to cut my strips of fabric 6 1/2" wide. I have some leftover partial strips of many of the English Lavender fabrics and I have bundled them with the rest of the Triangles on a Roll papers. Leave a comment and visit The Darling Dogwood on facebook for entries. Any blog comment will do, but if you need a prompt, tell me your favorite classic star block. Carpenter's Star is one of mine!
Be sure to visit my fellow ambassadors Jennifer of Curlicue Creations and Anorina of Samelia's Mum to see what they made with the beautiful English Lavender collection!
