Sunday, September 29, 2024

Flower Pot blog hop: Garden Breeze

Welcome to my stop on the Flower Pot blog hop! Flower Pot is a beautiful new fabric collection by Island Batik that is a signature collection for my friend in Quilt Land, Jennifer of Inquiring Quilter. I loved these bright, pretty florals the moment I saw them and was so thrilled that Jennifer asked me to make something with these gorgeous fabrics. With a name like Flower Pot and the beautiful flower motifs in the fabric, I knew I wanted to make quilty flowers. I decided on my pattern Garden Breeze, so named because of the combination of flower and pinwheel blocks.

I decided to use all 6 of the primarily pink fabrics in Flower pot for the flowers, and 2 of the fabrics that read mostly yellow for the flower centers. There is a beautiful green/teal with very occasional bits of purple in it for the pinwheels. And I selected a fabulous multi-colored fabric from the line for the binding. I chose the Basic Flour from the Neutrals collection as the background, partially because I like the gentle swirls in it and partly because of the play on words of Flour/Flower. 😀 ⚘ Overall, there are 10 fabrics from Flower Pot in the quilt, plus Flour.

I am so thrilled with how Garden Breeze looks in Flower Pot fabrics! I had this in various stages on my design wall for about a month. My design wall is in the hallway and you can see it from the couch, so I loved seeing it out of the corner of my eye when watching TV with my family.

I quilted with organic wavy lines, my favorite quilting motif. I hope it looks like a gentle Garden Breeze! Ha! Buttercup was quite interested in the quilting and insisted she be allowed to inspect the proceedings.

This quilt is Buttercup Approved

I thought about adding an additional pinwheel block to each corner of the sashing, but I didn't like it when I laid it out. So then I had 4 extra pinwheel blocks. The student art club at the community college where I work is doing an community quilt project this month, so I turned those pinwheels and a few other Flower Pot fabrics into a 12" block for that quilt!

To celebrate Flower Pot, Jennifer has put together a full schedule of quilty goodness! She is having a giveaway of a fat quarter bundle of these gorgeous fabrics. You can enter to win here. She is also hosting a Quilt Along of her pattern Charlotte that starts on October 10th, and there are additional prizes for people sewing along. AND Charlotte has a companion quilt pattern; while you make Charlotte there are bonus HSTs that can be used to make Lydia. See the Charlotte & Lydia patterns here and register for the Quilt Along.

Here is the schedule of fabulous designers showing off Flower Pot fabrics with their beautiful designs and creations:

Flower Pot Blog Hop

September 23rd – Jennifer @ Inquiring Quilter (Enter to win FQ Pack!)
September 24th – Andi @ True Blue Quilts
September 25th – Jennifer @ Inquiring Quilter (Return & find out another way to win)
September 26th – Lisa @ Lisa’s Quilting Passion
September 27th – Tiffany @ Needles In A Hayes Stack See Tiffany’s quilt at Jennifer’s Facebook or Instagram
September 28th – Kathleen @ Kathleen McMusing
September 29th – Emily @ The Darling Dogwood 🠜 You Are Here!
September 30th – Denise @ Quiltery
October 1st – Jane @ Stitch By Stitch Custom Quilting
October 2nd – Sue @ Larkspur Lane Designs
October 3rd – Laura @ Slice of Pi
October 4th – Brianna @ Sew Cute and Quirky
October 5th – Leah @ Quilted Delights
October 6th – Jennifer @ Inquiring Quilter — (Winner Announced!)

There is also an Instagram Loop October 7th through October 9th with more prizes! I hope enjoy all the Flower Pot goodness!

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

The Geometry of Flight

Welcome to my stop on Island Batik's Adventurous Applique blog hop! This month's challenge is to make an applique quilt specifically using the edge painting technique created by 4th & 6th designs. I was send the Geometric Symphony collection as well as 5 coordinating threads from Aurifil thread for the edge painting.

Materials used in this project were given to me by Island Batik, Aurifil, Schmetz, Hobbs, and Oliso.

I enjoy applique and was excited to try a new applique technique. The edge painting technique was originally inspired by flowers, so that was my tentative plan. But the Geometric Symphony fabric changed my plan. While beautiful, the bold geometric patterns would not work well for smaller, delicate areas of flowers. I needed something with larger pieces to show off the bold designs in the fabrics. I played around with a few different ideas and eventually landed on butterflies. I have the butterfly die for my Accuquilt Go and that would give me nice, big pieces to show off the fabric.

All 20 fabrics from Geometric Symphony are in this quilt. I used the 4 golden fabrics for the butterfly bodies, chose one the dark blue with magenta squares for the sashing (I had a 2-yard cut of that one), and used the other 15 fabrics for the butterfly wings. I cut both a top wing set and a bottom wing set from each of the wing fabric and mixed and matched.

Butterfly bodies

I typically use fusible web in my applique but the original edge painting technique uses glue (specifically Roxanne's glue baste-it). I didn't have any of that glue or any other fine applicator tip glue bottle. Once my butterfly wings were cut I was inpatient to get started, so I used Elmer's Disappearing Purple glue sticks instead. I love Elmer's disappearing Purple glue sticks, and I stock up each year in July/August during back-to-school sales. The glue sticks would not work as well if I had really small, delicate pieces, but for my larger pieces they worked great! The butterfly bodies were small enough that I did decide to use fusible web for those. My Oliso iron worked wonders with all of the pieces.

I wanted my butterflies to look like they were flying, so I used a Blender from the always-available Foundations collection, Wavy Dots in Bluebird, as my background. Once I had all the butterflies parts paired up and the edges glues down, I was ready for the applique! You can see a demonstration of this technique by one of the creators here. There is also a newer video here that uses fusible web instead of glue.

The stitching (& stabilizer) from the back

The videos I watched on the method said it is ok if it looks messy and goes outside the lines. Which is good, because I did go outside the lines! But I'm happy with how it looks, and once I got into the back-and-forth rhythm, I liked the method. I did find that I needed a stabilizer on the back of my block during the applique, and I used the tear-away stabilizer I had on hand. The Schmetz nonstick needles were perfect for all of the stitching, including the edge stitching.

https://www.schmetzneedles.com/

I used the five beautiful threads Aurifil chose to coordinate with Geometric Symphony and simply chose the thread that I thought looked best with each fabric in the moment. So the same fabric in one butterfly may have a different thread color in another butterfly. I laid them all out as I finished and stitched together with simple sashing.

My finished top was 40" x 52". I had a throw sized batting of Hobbs Silk Blend batting from their Tuscany Collection. I layered that with the top and used the 2-yard cut of a golden swirl fabric from the Geometric Symphony for the back. I quilted with organic wavy lines and I love how it looks like the butterflies are flying.

Backing fabric also from Geometric Symphony

I named this The Geometry of Flight because I like the combination of the nod to the fabric collection and the natural flight of the butterflies.

Two other Ambassadors are playing with Geometic Symphony and applique today. Be sure to visit both Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts and Leah of Quilted Delights to see what they did with these fabrics! It's always fun to see such different looks from the same fabric collection.

What's a blog hop without lots of giveaways?! I cut a bunch of extra 5" squares of Geometric Symphony fabrics. (Sorry, I didn't get a chance to take a photo in time, I had a family situation come up.) Leave me a comment between now and September 21st and I'll pick a number randomly for a winner. Any comment is fine, but if you need a prompt, tell me what applique method you like. Edge painting? Needle turn? Fusible? Raw Edge? Something Else? None of the Above? (Preeti & Leah also have giveaways, as do many of the ambassadors on this hop. You can see the full schedule on my previous post. )

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Adventurous Applique blog hop

It's time for another Island Batik blog hop to introduce new collections! This time, we were all tasked to create an applique quilt using an edge painting technique developed by Barbara Persing & Mary Hoover of 4th and 6th Designs. We were each sent a variety of 40 weight Aurifil Threads that coordinate with our assigned collections.

The blog hop starts today and continues for most of the month of September. Every Friday, Island Batik will have a new giveaway. Additionally, many of the Island Batik ambassadors will include a bonus giveaway as part of their posts.

I was sent the Geometric Symphony collection designs by Jerry Khiev. Geometric Symphony features purples, magenta, and golds with heavily geometric designs. You'll have to wait until September 17th to see my project, but there is lots of other inspiration in the meantime! Check out the full schedule of the hop: