Island Batik Ambassador Box 2 for 2019

It was just like Christmas in July when the second Island Batik ambassador arrived! Oh, how I love getting a great big box of fabric, all of which is a surprise to me until I open it 😊 To be clear, everything in this box was given to me by Island Batik and their industry partners as part of the Island Batik ambassador program. Each month I create something with the supplies I've been given in these boxes. I love being an Island Batik ambassador!

You can watch my unboxing video or you can just keep scrolling to see the pictures.

First up, here's a beautiful creamy neutral that I know will go with pretty much anything. This is called Milkshake.

Island Batik solids are made on the same base fabric as the printed fabrics and I love working with them. Again in this box, we ambassadors have been given yardage of black, white and grey. This is great because I was getting low on these 😊

This 2 ½" strip set is from the line "Little Sir, Little Miss" and I have yardage of two of the prints. Aren't these chunky numbers fabulous?

This line is "Garden Party" and is a fabulous rainbow. And just look at those strawberries 😋 I'm still waiting for the strawberries in my backyard to ripen, but these ones look good enough to eat.

This fat quarter bundles is called "Geared Up" and has such great graphic prints. I love the neutral palette, too, with the browns, greys and black.

Then there were two gorgeous bundles of Foundations. I love all of the Foundations line and it makes me happy to add these ones to my Island Batik stash.

 Hobb's Batting sent three packages of batting - wool, wool/cotton bend and 100% cotton.

Aurifil sent me two colours of 50 wt thread, both of which coordinate beautifully with the Garden Party line.

And Accuquilt sent me the Crossed Canoes Block-on-Board die, which is going to be fun to use.

Doesn't Island Batik spoil their ambassadors?? There are always so many fun things included in the box that it's hard to know what to use first!

Geese and Flowers - July Island Batik Ambassador Project

Note, the fabric, batting and some of the thread for this project were given to me by Island Batik and their industry partners as part of the Island Batik ambassador program.

The Island Batik ambassador challenge for July is called "Artsy-Fartsy" and we were asked to make an art quilt using Island Batik fabrics and three different Aurifil thread weights, providing at least three pictures to show how the threads were used. Well, I have no problem using Island Batik fabrics or different weights of Aurifil thread and, as you'll see, providing three pictures is no problem. But the art quilt part definitely had me stumped. In the end, I'm not really convinced anyone would call my little mini "artsy-fartsy," but it is kind of cute, so we'll go with that 😊

While I was piecing the July block for the Monthly Colour Challenge, hosted by Jen of Patterns by Jen, I was also contemplating what I would make for this project. I decided I could piece some kind of a simple background and then add flowers to it somehow (you can see how specific I was being). But what would I piece for the background? That's when I looked at what was in my hands and thought "this would work!"

With all the amazing fabric Island Batik has sent me over the last two years, it wasn't at all hard to find a couple of bright colours that would coordinate with the aquas I had used to piece the block. Then the question was, would I find Aurifil threads in different weights that coordinated with the fabrics? My Aurifil stash isn't nearly as extensive as my IB stash, but I was pleasantly surprised to find exactly what I wanted.

To make the flowers, I traced around a glass to give myself a guideline, then free motion quilted the basic petal shape. Maybe I should call it free motion embroidery at this point, since it was only the one layer of fabric. For the pink flowers I used Aurifil 1200 in 40 wt. I love the subtle variation in colour in this fabric, which is left over from my Murrina quilt.

I used Aurifloss in 6722 to hand embroider random short lines to create the flower centers. I tried french knots first, but they were too bulky looking so I switched to the random lines.  Then I roughly cut out the flowers.

Since it was only one layer of fabric, with no stabilizer or interfacing, the stitching made the flower curl a bit, which is exactly what I had been hoping would happen. See how nicely the 40 wt thread and the Aurifloss sit on top of the fabric?

At this point, I set the flower aside and went back to the block. I basted it, using Hobb's 100% cotton batting and another aqua Island Batik fabric for the back and then I stared at it for a while. How should I quilt it? I was making this whole process up as I went along, remember, with no idea what would be coming next. I started off by using Aurifil 5005 in 50 wt to outline the flying geese and then went back and added back and forth lines to them. Then I used 5005 in 12 wt for some big stitch hand quilting around their edges.

Then I added the flowers, stitching inside each petal and around the flower center with the same thread I had used already. 40 wt 1200 for the pink flowers

and 28 wt 2430 for the purple ones. This was my first time using the 28 wt thread, so I checked out Aurifil's recommendations before starting. They recommend a denim needle and using 50 wt thread in the bobbin, which worked perfectly. This purple fabric was one of the 5" strips included in my box back at the beginning of the year and I love how rich it is.

Just look at how much thicker the 28 wt looks compared to the 40 wt, with the Aurifloss being even thicker again.

The flowers are not attached right to the edges of the petals, so they retain the slight curl from the initial round of stitching, giving the mini quilt a fun 3D element.

 I finished off the quilting by using 2311 in 50 wt to quilt a simple stipple in the background, lifting each of the flower edges as needed so I could stitch under them just a little. Here's how it all looks on the back, with some triangle hanging tabs and my label.

I took the mini for a walk on a local trail to get these pictures and along the way I found this perfectly painted rock placed just off the trail.

 My little Geese and Flowers mini quilt seems right at home among the lupines, don't you think?

Here are all the threads I used - 50 wt (2311 and 5005), 40 wt (1200), 28 wt (2430), 12 wt (5005) and Aurifloss (6722).

While it may not be worthy of being called an art quilt, I did have fun playing around to make my Geese and Flowers mini quilt 😊 Have you ever made an art quilt?

New Life in Make Modern

I have another quilt in the newest issue of Make Modern magazine, which is now available. Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy working with the ladies at Make Modern? All three of them (Kristy, Lara and Jane) are wonderful 😊 I love that they keep including my quilts in their beautiful magazine.

My quilt in this issue is New Life, so called because it gives new life to old jeans 😊 It's not very often I'm trendy, but upcycling old clothes is very on trend right now and I just happen to have a whole closet full of old jeans.

I also have an overabundance of scraps of quilting fabric and New Life makes good use of them, too. I used a little bit of everything in this quilt - fabrics from Northcott (including the solid white background), Island Batik, Me + You, plus plenty of others I've had since before I started paying attention to who made which fabrics.

It doesn't actually take many pairs of jeans to cut out all of the pieces, but I wanted lots of variety in the colour of the denim, so I used a lot. Plus, some were from when my boys were really little, with the knees out, which meant I didn't get many pieces from those pairs. It felt great to use the denim for something, rather than just throwing out those unwearable jeans.

I cut out the applique pieces with my new Midnight Edition tailor's shears from LDH Scissors. These scissors are gorgeous and *so* sharp!

Just watch how easily they cut right through the seam on a pair of jeans. My old scissors couldn't cut through that seam at all.

I used Warm and Natural batting and backed the quilt with the same solid white Northcott. The quilting shows up really well in person, but it was soooo hard to photograph! It didn't help that the sun was going down so shadows were unavoidable.

I didn't stitch around the applique pieces until it was time to quilt them. With hundreds of pieces, stitching around them only once made this much faster to finish. I considered using fusible web to attach the flower pieces, but I didn't want the extra stiffness that gives a quilt, especially since the denim is already thicker than quilting cotton and I wanted the quilt to stay as soft as possible. Instead, I just glued them in place using a washable glue stick and hoped they'd stay in place until I could quilt them, which they did (mostly). I did have to re-glue a piece here and there, but it wasn't bad at all. And the quilt is wonderfully soft!

I used Aurifil thread in three colours to quilt the flowers - 2692 for the black flower centers and the darker petals, 2600 for the lighter petals and 2780 for the in-between ones. I quilted just inside each of the applique shapes, with the intention that the denim will fray over time and soften those edges. You can already see that the edges frayed even as I was working on the quilt.

 I quilted quick dot to dot continuous curves using 2600 in the triangles. Then I quilted the background with 2024 and a meandering loop and flower design that was so much fun to stitch.

This brick retaining wall has become a favourite place for me to take pictures. You can see it in my Dresden placemats, Churn baby quilt and Blowing in the Wind posts. Good thing the owners of the property don't mind me draping quilts over their wall!

I finished putting the binding on right after supper a couple of days before the quilt was due to Make Modern, and right before a forecasted stretch of bad weather. I immediately called my friend, Michelle, to see if she was available to help with the photography (like, right now!) and enlisted Zach to help, too. We were out the door less than half an hour after the last stitch went into the binding, lol. Michelle's son came along, too, so the two boys held the quilt while I took pictures and Michelle gave directions. It worked out really well and we were able to get these pictures before the sun got too low.

You can get Make Modern, issue 29 here. Or, sign up for a subscription, either for 6 months or 12 months, and I am sure you won't regret it. And, if you'd like to see everything Make Modern has ever published, you can get an All Access Subscription, which gives you access to all of the previous 28 issues with a 12 month subscription going forward.

I love a good scrappy quilt and New Life is definitely that. Do you have a closet full of old jeans you could turn into a quilt?


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