Tool Craze Blog Hop

Welcome to May! In addition to being the start of a new month, today is the start of a new Island Batik blog hop.  This month, we'll be highlighting Island Batik's newest collections, hitting shops soon, and fabulous tools by Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design.

Each ambassador was sent a generous half yard bundle of a new Island Batik collection and one of Deb Tucker's tools.  The challenge is use as many fabrics from the collection as possible, and to make at least 30 units using Deb's tool--and since all Deb's tools make units in a wide range of sizes, we have to make units in at least 2 different sizes.

I was sent the beautiful Sea Cookies collection by Kate Colleran of Kate Colleran Designs and the Corner Pop III tool by Studio 180 design.  I love the blues and pinks with hints of green in this collection.  You'll have to wait until May 10th to see my quilt, but be sure to check in on each ambassador throughout the hop to see what beauties they have created!  Many ambassadors will over giveaways, and Island Batik does a weekly giveaway that starts each Friday, so check out their blog every week.

WEEK 1

May 1

Susan Deshensky, Lady Blue Quilts

Randi Jones, Randi’s Roost

May 2

Elita Sharpe, Busy Needle Quilting

Mania Hatziioannidi, Mania for Quilts

May 3

Brittany Fisher, Bobbin with Brittany

Pamela Boatright, Pamela Quilts

May 4

Connie Kauffman, Kauffman Designs

Denise Looney, For the Love of Geese

WEEK 2

May 8

Reed Johnson, Blue Bear Quilts

Sandra Starley, Textile Time Travels

May 9

Gail Sheppard, Quilting Gail

Lana Russel, Lana Quilts

May 10

Emily Leachman, The Darling Dogwood

Claudia Porter, Create with Claudia

Anorina Morris, Samelia’s Mum

May 11

Brenda Alburl, Songbird Designs

Jennifer Thomas, Curlicue Creations

WEEK 3

May 15

Victoria Johnson, Forever Quilting for You

Leah Malasky, Quilted Delights

Maryellen McAuliffe, Mary Mack Made Mine

May 16

Renee Atkinson, Pink Tulip Quilting

Sarah Pitcher, Pitcher’s Boutique

May 17

Suzy Webster, Websterquilt

Preeti Harris, Sew Preeti Quilts

Lisa Pickering, Lisa’s Quilting Passion

Crazy Quilts with Aurifil & Island Batik

All month long, Island Batik & Aurifil are crazy for crazy quilts! Each Island Batik ambassador was sent one of Aurifil's Color Builder sets and challenged to feature those threads in a crazy quilt project.  The 2022 Color Builder sets honor plants from the rain forest and highlights Aurifil's variegated threads.  I was sent the Stinking Corpse Lily set.  Despite the pungent name, the set features beautiful threads in sort of a coral colorway. The set includes 4250 Flamingo, a lovely light variegated thread, 4668 Strawberry Parfait, a variegated thread with lengths of darker coral added to the lighter shades, and 2435 Peachy Pink, a solid color thread that looks exactly as it is named.  

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

I knew that for crazy quilt, contrast was going to be key.  I decided to pair the Stinking Corpse Lily threads with a strip pack of Playful Purples.  It is no secret that purple is my favorite color, so I wanted to make something that I would get to see or use regularly, so I could revel in all the beautiful shades of purple.  When I was looking for smaller projects, I came across a tutorial for a covered composition notebook by the Quilt Rambler, who happens to be a former Island Batik ambassador.  

 

I made two notebook covers.  For the first, I essentially did the crazy quilting as I went.  I started by layering white solid as my foundation, which does not show in the final project, with a layer of Hobbs Thermore batting.  Thermore is a thin polyester batting that I have really come to love.  It's fabulous for small projects. Then I randomly picked two bits of fabric from Playful Purples and sewed them together.  

After rolling over the seam with my seam roller, I picked one of the three Stinking Corpse Lily threads and a fancy stitch from my sewing machine and stitched the decorative stitch across the seam.  I kept adding pieces of purple and using more stitches until I filled a piece slightly larger than needed for the notebook cover.  Each time, I picked which of the three threads I thought would look best.

For the second cover, I did a few things differently.  First, I drew dogwood blossoms on a four pieces of fabric to include. It's spring, so dogwoods are blooming here in North Carolina!  I sewed all the playful purple fabrics together first, rather than adding decorative stitches as I went--it certainly was much faster that way!   I also chose a single stitch, one I particularly liked in the first piece, and I only used the variegated Flamingo thread.  

I started the project with a brand new Schmetz microtex chrome needle, and it stitched all the decorative stitches beautifully.  I think both have the fun look of a crazy quilt.

Once I had all the crazy stitches done, I trimmed the pieces and got down to making the notebook covers.  I had some yardage of Thistle, the lightest of the Playful Purples, that I used for the lining.  The tutorial calls for ribbon, but I made my own using some of the strips pressed into quarters.  The tutorial was fairly easy to follow, and I really like that it includes a small vinyl pocket for pens.

 

It's fun to have an occasion and an excuse to use the decorative stitches on my machine.  A few years ago I made myself a stitch reference of all my machine's stitches --stitched in Aurifil thread, of course!  It was a handy reference to have for this project, as it reminded me what each stitch looks like when it is stitched out.  I used a lot of decorative stitches in two previous ambassador projects: in January 2020 I made a crazy quilted machine cover for the Let's Get Scrappy challenge, and in October 2020 I used decorative stitches as a form of thread painting for my Funky Flower in that year's Aurifil challenge. It was fun to have a crazy quilt challenge, and I'm pleased with my playfully purple notebooks!

Stay at Home Round Robin Winners

 For the first time this year, we had prizes for the Stay At Home Round Robin!

Several of the hosts got together on a Zoom call and used a random number generator to pick winners.

Clockwise from top left: Roseanne, Gail, Emily, Anja

Gail has already contacted all the lucky winners.

• Island Batik fat quarter bundle:  Mari @ Academic Quilter
• Island Batik fat quarter bundle: Julie Ann @ Quilts and Costumes
• Island Batik fat quarter bundle: Janice @ Sing Read Sew.com
• Hobbs Wool Batt: Bernie @ Needle & Foot
• Aurfil Thread:  Heather F
• Oliso Mini Iron : Laura Kate @ Daily Fiber Fun
• Pattern from For the Love of Geese (Denise): Dawn at Quilting by Dawn
• Prairie Spirit Alpaca Pressing Mat: Diann at Little Penguin Quilts
• Gift Certificate of choice from Chris: Carol @ Quilt Schmidt
• Fat Quarter Shop Gift Certificate: Gretchen from Gretchen’s Little Quilts
• MSQ Gift Certificate from Roseanne: Joy at The Joyful Quilter

We had several people ask if we will do the Stay at Home Round Robin again next year, and we absolutely will! 

Glow of Spring

 

In under the wire with a third Island Batik finish for March's It's All Up To You challenge.  I'm using the challenge as motivation to finish this year's teacher quilts.  I have four to make and three are completely done!  This beauty is for Ms. B, the director of and one of the teacher's at Fire Monkey's before school program.  She had his group when he was in Kindergarten!  

Her favorite color is yellow, so I set out to make some cheerful yellow flowers.  I went through all my Island Batik scraps and picked out all my yellows and golds.  The green is an always-available Foundation called Lemongrass, the background is solid white, and the flower center is tangy dotted fabric left over from one of last year's teacher quilts, though I don't know the name of it.  I love how it turned out -- it is very bright and looks like spring! Because the yellows make it almost glow, I named it Glow of Spring.

I'm not sure where I got this block, I don't remember if I saw it somewhere or what.  I do know I cut out all of the pieces with my Accuquilt and the shapes from the 8" Cube.  I quilted in organic wavy lines on the diagonal with Aurifil thread 2134, Spun Gold.  The batting is Hobbs 80/20 and I used Schmetz micrtoex needles for all piecing and quilting. 

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Accuquilt, Schmetz, and Aurifil.

 

I cannot resist using the incredible skyline-view terrace from work for the backdrop of these photos.  Check out that city view!  (That's Charlotte, NC.)

Thanks, Island Batik, for the motivation to get these teacher quilts done early!  I've got one more that isn't quite done yet, but will be well before school starts. 

Hattie

I'm using March's Ambassador's Choice challenge as motivation to get some of the this year's teacher quilts done early.  Today's quilt is for Ms. L, one of the before-school teachers.  Both before-school teachers have had Fire Monkey since Kindergarten, so I'm excited to make quilts for them this year.  Ms. L's favorite color is red.  The medallion quilt on my living room wall has a round of Hattie's Choice blocks, cut with my Accuquilt, and I've been wanting to do a quilt with just that block.  So that's what I picked for Ms. L.

 

 
The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Accuquilt, Schmetz, and Aurifil.  

All of these fabrics are from Island Batik's Foundations line, so they are all available all the time.  The red, black, and orange fabrics are all Blenders, and the yellow is a Basic called Amber.   I used just two color variations of the block and alternated them. Hattie's Choice is an 8" finished block, and I decided on a 7 x 7 layout.  I wanted to emphasis the red a little more, so I added a 3" border, making this finish at 62" square.

the two colorways I used

Once I had the top completed, I layered it with Hobbs 80/20 batting, my go-to batting for most quilts.  I used Schemtz needles for all piecing and quilting, as they are the only needles I will use.  I quilted diagonal lines through the kite sections of the blocks using Aurifil 2692 Black and 1104 Neon Orange.

 

Hattie's Choice is probably my favorite of the BOB dies that I have.  BOB stand for Block on Board,  meaning you can cut everything for the block in one pass of the cutter.  It's a really striking block and can really change looks depending on how you choose to color each part of the block.  I used it in my ambassador challenge in March 2020 and then made that same pattern again last year for one of the teacher quilts.

 

That's two down, two to go!  Thanks to Island Batik for the open theme and the motivation to get these done!

Flamingo Fun

It's hard to believe that this year's Stay at Home Round Robin is at an end.  I had such a good time with this quilt!  I decided to call it Flamingo Fun, because those flamingos are my favorite part.  

 

After the final round, it looked like this.  I had a multi-colored Island Batik fabric that went well with the color scheme of Flamingo Fun and I considered adding a sizeable border to the top.  Ultimately, I decided I didn't want it any bigger, and finished the outsides with the same Island Batik solid Cobalt that I used for sashing.  I also used the Cobalt for the binding.  I quilted it with a simple cross-hatch design.

 

I did have quite a bit of the multi-colored fabric, which was leftover from my Rose Arbor quilt last year, so I used it for the back instead.  It wasn't quite large enough on it's own, so I added a stripe of solid Turquoise.  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the back while it was still light out, so you're stuck with this indoor shot of just the multi-colored section.

Did you enjoy this year's Stay at Home Round Robin? If you are sewing along, be sure to link up with hostess supreme Gail to get a final entry into our prize drawing.  And don't forget to check out the final quilts of all the co-hosts!

 

• Gail @ Quilting Gail 
• Roseanne & Sue @ Home Sewn by Us
• Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
• Chris @ Chrisknitssews
• Anja @ Anja Quilts  
  

Blue Skies

March's Island Batik Ambassador is Ambassador's Choice, named "It's All Up To You."  We get free reign to make whatever we want with whichever Island Batik fabrics we want. I decided to take this as motivation to get at least some of this year's teacher quilts done with a few months to spare.  First up is for Mr. B, who says his favorite color is sky blue.

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Accuquilt, Schmetz, and Aurifil.  

To give you some backstory, every year I make quilts for Fire Monkey's teachers.  As soon as a new school year starts, Fire Monkey is tasked with finding out his teacher's favorite colors.  This year, I'm making four quilts: his two classroom teachers (dual language school, so one English and one Spanish teacher) and the two before-school teachers, both who have been there since he was in Kindergarten.  For Mr. B's quilt, I went through all my blue Island Batik scraps and pulled everything on the lighter end of the spectrum. There are fabrics from multiple previous collections in this, and I paired the blue scraps with solid white.  This was cut 100% with my Accuquilt.  I used the 4" HST die from my 8" cube. 

 

I made a very similar quilt in July 2020 for the Island Batik/Accuquilt Christmas in July challenge.  I used the same layout.  The July 2020 version was made with 3" finished HSTs, instead of the 4" HST of this version, but that's really the only difference.  I named that one Sunny Skies, so in keeping with the theme, I'm calling this one Blue Skies. 

Sunny Skies, from July 2020

Blue Skies, March 2023

This has been my leader and ender project for a while, and I'm so glad to see it come together!  I used Hobbs bleached 80/20 batting, perfect for quilts with a white background.   I used Schemtz needles for all piecing and quilting, as they are the only needles I will use.  I chose to quilt in kind of a trip around the world formation, and I did lines on each end that echoed around the square.  I used Aurifil 2770Very Light Delft in the blue sections and 2000 Light Sand in the white sections.

So that's one down, three to go!  I don't think I get can all four done this month, but I am hoping to finish at least two others while the challenges are "all up to me!"