Welcome to my stop and the very last day of the Irish Chain blog hop, brought to you by Island Batik and AccuQuilt! I hope you've been following along to see all the amazing projects created by the Island Batik Ambassadors using the newest fabric collections and Accuquilt's 10" Irish Chain block, one of their newest Block on Board dies.
When I first learned that we were getting the Irish Chain die and it created a 10" (finished) block, I thought about what other BOB dies I had from Accuquilt that also made 10" blocks, to see if I could create something fun with 2 dies. I own 2 other BOB dies that make 10" blocks: Pineapple and Rising Star. I played around with both in EQ8 and decided that I really liked the look of the Pineapple block with the Irish Chain.
My secret collection was Tinsel Treasures, a signature collection for Sarah Fabian of Quilt Basket, created by Jerry Khiev, creative director of Island Batik. Tinsel Treasures is a gorgeous winter collection, with snowflakes, trees, deer, candy canes, and more, all in a variety of blue-on-white and white-on-blue prints. While I love monochromatic quilts, I decided I wanted to add a touch of another color to go with the beautiful blues in Tinsel Treasures. My favorite color combination is blue and purple, so I added just a touch of Grape (pineapple centers) and Lavender (inner ring), both from Island Batik's always-available basics collection. Solid black made all the fabrics pop.
I sewed my 18 Irish Chain blocks first, and I was so in the groove that I forgot to take pictures! I chose the darkest blues to make the chains, and used 4 prints with larger wintery designs for the bigger squares so that the trees and deer would stand out. The blocks came together really fast.
All of my Pineapple centers are the same, with Grape in the center, a beautiful light blue with pine needles next, and then a ring of Lavender. Then I used a variety of the blue-on-white prints for the next rings, and a lighter blue for the outer ring. I kept thinking of them as snowballs! So I named this Pineapple Snowballs.
My original plan was to just make a 5 x 7 block layout, for a finished quilt that was 50" x 70". But once I had it together, it looked unfinished, so I used pieces B & D from the die to extend that chain into a border. My finished quilt is roughly 54" x 74". I quilted it with a medium blue Aurifil thread and used a Schmetz needle for all steps. The batting is Hobbs 80/20.
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| on my design wall, before outer border |
Materials used in this project were given to me by Island Batik, Schmetz, Hobbs, Aurifil, and Oliso.
My friend Gail of Quilting Gail also has Tinsel Treasures and she made not one, but TWO beautiful quilts with this collection. Be sure to visit her and see what she made!
