On the Plus Side {Finished Quilt}

This has been a very busy month and I'm relieved that I was able to finish this quilt up over the long weekend!

But first, take a quick peek at the pictures I showed yesterday -- does anything look different in my final quilt?

Yes, I added a grey border all the way around the quilt. No, this wasn't a part of my original plan and I'm very glad that my spontaneous decision worked!

The main reason I didn't add a border when I was finishing the quilt top was that I wasn't sure that I had enough backing fabric to accommodate a border. After I finished quilting the black small plus blocks, I had the quilt laid on the floor and realized that I had enough backing and batting on all four sides to add a bit of a border. I cut 4" strips of grey solid and added them to the quilt using the quilt as you go method and used black thread in the bobbin so that the stitches would be less obvious on the backing.

In the grey areas, I did swirls with grey thread and in the orange plus blocks in the corns, I used a bright orange Aurifil to quilt wishbone-style loops.

For the binding, I used a yellow floral batik and did the binding entirely by machine.

Here's a full shot of just the back of this quilt.

The quilting with the black thread is nearly invisible in the full quilt picture above, but is visible below.

I'm not exactly sure what this quilt's future will be but for now it might get hung in my sewing room. While not among my most ambitious undertakings quilting-wise, I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.

As always, a big hip hip hooray to Island Batik for allowing me to be an ambassador and tasking me with these fun monthly projects and a special thank you to Hobbs Batting for providing all of us Ambassadors with lots of great battings and sponsoring this month's project.

As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics, Aurifil thread, and Hobbs batting to use and share with you!

Quilt stats: 

Name: On the Plus Side

Pattern: Modified version of Cheryl and Paige's Modern Plus Sampler

Fabrics: Island Batik basics and solids

Batting: Hobbs 80/20 batting in black

Quilting: various free motion fillers, some threads Aurifil, some Connecting Threads

Techniques used: strip piecing, FMQ, machine binding

Size: approximately 56" square

Started: April 2019

Finished: May 2019

Future: TBD

Sharing at:
Wait Loss Wednesday
Needle and Thread Thursday
Put Your Foot Down
Brag About Your Beauties
May Favorite Finishes
What I Made Monday

On The Plus Side {Quilt Top + Quilting}

I had to do a *tiny* bit of finagling and planning to sew this top together because it isn't just a traditional grid, due to the tiny plus blocks surrounding the center five blocks. I first sewed the tiny plus blocks into sections, then sewed the sections of plus blocks to the larger strip blocks and rick rack blocks. From there I was able to sew things into rows, and then sew the rows together. I spent a significant amount of time thinking about how to press my blocks and attempting to have as many interlocking seams as possible and it was well worth the effort for this top.

Since this Island Batik Ambassador challenge is also sponsored by Hobbs batting, I pulled out my box-o-batting from my closet and decided on using some of the *black* batting for this project! I've never used a black batting before, and since my backing fabric is black, I thought this would be the perfect choice. As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics, Aurifil thread, and Hobbs batting to use and share with you!

For the backing, I decided that I would use the remainder of the black batik solid for my backing on this project, since I am not planning to give this as a baby quilt. I had to do some quilty math to determine how to most efficiently piece the backing -- it has two seams instead of one, but it did actually stretch the fabric further this way.

I am planning to quilt this in a similar fashion to my Meadow quilt -- with various simple fillers from the center out, however, I will be using multiple colors of thread for this project. The only caveat to my (current) plan is that I am going to leave the white areas unquilted.

To start, I used a orangy-red Aurifil thread in the red and orange stripes of the center blocks to quilt simple dense loops.

Tomorrow I'll have the finish of this quilt to show off -- and it might look a little different than you might expect!

Happy Tuesday! Sharing at What I Made!

Daisy Chain Baby Quilt {Finished Quilt}

I hope that you have enjoyed our Daisy Chain mystery QAL! Today I'm going to show the original tester quilt that I made!

Update 8/11/2020 -- This pattern is now available in our Etsy and Payhip shops. Please visit one of those sites to purchase the full pattern.

Remember seeing these pictures from August of last year?

When I was on retreat last year in August, my "secret sewing" was to test the Daisy Chain pattern in baby quilt form!

The quilt is 36" square for the baby size, so I added a border on all four sides to increase the size slightly.

This quilt was actually made as a baby quilt for a sweetheart who was born all the way back in October! I quilted it with a flowery meander and it has a flannel backing, like most of my baby quilts. I had enough of my peachy focal print to bind the quilt too!

Our quilt top parade starts on Monday, June 3rd and I can't wait to see your quilt tops and perhaps a few finished quilts mixed in!

Sharing at Brag about your Beauties!

Orange You Glad {Modern May with Island Batik}

Today I'm showing off my last blocks for my Modern May challenge! As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics and Hobbs batting to use and share with you!

My final blocks for this quilt top are my orange "rick rack" blocks. As a reminder, I'm using Cheryl and Paige's Modern Plus Sampler Pattern, with a few modifications. For the previous blocks, my big modification was strip piecing most of my block units, but for this block, I had some more significant changes.

Instead of having each rick rack section have three plus blocks, mine each have two. This is so that my sections will be square instead of rectangular. I picked three different orange fabrics and used a grey solid background.

Each of my blocks have one lighter orange plus block and one darker orange plus blocks. I added sashings on four sides to make my blocks the size that I need.

Next up will be putting my quilt top together and potentially start quilting it this weekend. I have a few ideas for doing the quilting and I am planning to use the rest of my black batik solid as the backing. 

What's your work in progress this lovely Wednesday? 

Sharing at Wait Loss Wednesday and Put Your Foot Down!

Daisy Chain QAL {Quilt Top Reveal}

Update 8/11/2020 -- This pattern is now available in our Etsy and Payhip shops. Please visit one of those sites to purchase the full pattern.

It's here -- the big reveal!

This week we are making our cross blocks and revealing the quilt layout. Thank you for participating with us!

Alternate your star blocks and your star blocks as shown in each diagram. Pay attention to the orientation of the “chain” through your star blocks – the chains should run diagonally from upper right to lower left in each block. It is also necessary to pay attention to the orientation of your cross blocks.

Did the quilt turn out the way that you guessed?

Here's the finished top of my baby sized version -- I did add a border to my quilt to make it a little bit larger. Since I finished this quilt quite a while ago, it has already been given to a lovely little lady named Abigail -- I'll share the full finish of this quilt on Friday!

For the twin version, my cross blocks are not all the same. Here's the first set before they were sewn together.

24 blocks ready to go!

I've gotten a little delayed in getting this top together, but I'm hoping to get it done this week!

Don't forget to share your Daisy Chain quilt pictures on Instagram with #daisychainquilt and in the Honey, Bunny, and Doll Facebook group!

Check out some finished tops:
--Stephanie's Halloween quilt
--Gene's amazing technicolor quilt
--Gail's French General-inspired quilt (she's actually finished, holy wow!)
--Christina's very scrappy version
--Michelle's purple/blue/teal version

Schedule
Fabric Requirements - February 4th
Cutting - February 18th
Block Units- March 4th
Block Units - March 18th
Block Units - April 1st
Block Units - April 15th
Catch up week link up - April 29th
Top Construction Part 1 - May 6th
Top Construction Part 2 - May 20th <-- That's today!
Link up/giveaways/quilt parade starts: June 3rd
Link up/giveaways/quilt parade ends: June 17th

Black and White {Modern May with Island Batik}

Modern making continues in May for my Island Batik Ambassador project!

Like the first set of blocks that I made, I modified the directions for my next set of blocks -- a whole bunch of little plus blocks! -- to strip piece as much of the blocks as possible. Instead of using the white solid again in these blocks, I am using a yellow dotted white batik with the black solid.

Strip pieced sets above, subcut units ready to assemble below. I'm still trying to whittle down my collection of thread so for these units, I frequently had black thread in the top and white thread in the bobbin, or vice versa. 

Making these little blocks is an interesting change of pace from the other blocks I have been making lately!

Next up will be making some partial rick rack blocks for the corners and this will finish off my quilt top! I'm planning to make my final blocks orange with a grey background. This will allow me to use up some of the orange scraps that I have. I won't end up using any yellow in the quilt itself, but perhaps I'll use yellow for the binding.

I also saw an exciting sign while out running errands this weekend:

For those of you that might not know, I live pretty close to the middle of nowhere, and at least a 30-45 minute drive from any actual craft stores (or normal civilization), so this is a huge improvement. It might not be a full-service quilt shop within 10 minutes of my house, but it will, at the very least, have a better selection of sewing related craft supplies than our Walmart!

Karen's Quilt {C2C Bee 2019}

This go-round of the Coast to Coast bee has me working on Karen's quilt. For her quilt this year, she has a medallion quilt inspired by a few Kaffe Fassett florals.

Karen made the star center and Stephanie added the subsequent borders. 

I decided that my first order of business would be to add some smaller spacer borders. First I added a solid border in the blue that Karen sent along with the quilt and then I added a border of all 4" x 2" finished flying geese. These geese were made from the same blue solid and two different black tonal prints. I used my Accuquilt Go! cutter to cut all of the pieces and parts for my geese.

So, I actually had this plan in place for over a month and most of the cutting done before I finally got this section of the quilt added. Technically I'm a little behind now (and Audrey's quilt is sitting in a box waiting to be worked on!) but I didn't want to just add this section to the quilt so I got Audrey's blessing to hold onto the quilt a few extra days and add a little more to the quilt.

After a little bit of thinking, I decided on adding some half sawtooth stars to the quilt. I also used my Go! cutter to cut the triangles for these units and used 5 different fabrics for my half stars on the sides of the quilt (finished size 16" x 8") and quarter stars in the corners (8" finished).

I used both of the floral prints that Karen sent along with the quilt and then added in three fabrics in similar colors for the stars.

The big piecing was fast and really added a big punch to the quilt, as well as showing off the beautiful prints! Now Karen's quilt is 64 inches square!

This is already off in the mail to Audrey -- and I have Audrey's quilt from Stephanie waiting for me to start working on it!

Hope your weekends were full of productive sewing!

Sharing at Oh Scrap!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway here!

Halloween Spooks in Faboolous Fun {Autumn in the Air Hop + Giveaway}

Today I'm the hostess for the Autumn in the Air blog hop!

I'm more of a summer girl myself, but I love sewing for fall! This time around, I picked the Faboolous Fun line to sew up a new version of our Halloween Spooks pattern, which can be used to make a table runner or a wall hanging.

I really loved the green prints in this collection, so I decided to use that as the main background fabric. Oh, and guess what! This fabric GLOWS! (I'm not a photography wizard, but I did figure out a way to show the fabrics glowing in the dark!)

The pattern itself has options for scrappy piecing or strip piecing, and I chose the strip piecing methods. I used my own solid scraps to do the applique sections. I picked the cat, two bats, and the witch hat. I chose these because the black solid shows up so nicely against the lime green star print. I used black thread to do all of the machine applique stitching using a blanket stitch.

This is actually the first time I've made this pattern, despite it being one of our "original" Honey, Bunny, and Doll patterns.

A general applique block top: if you struggle with applique distorting your base fabric, cut your base fabric pieces a 1/2" or 1" larger than necessary and then trim down before assembly. This also can help you should your appliques shift and end up off-center!

I used black thread to do the quilting; I did squiggly lines interspersed with stars. The backing and the binding uses a web print and I used orange thread to top stitch the binding.

Get your own copy of this pattern here!

Now onto the giveaway!

Benartex will be giving away a bundle of 8 fat quarters from this collection to one lucky winner!

To enter, leave me a comment telling me all of your feelings about machine applique -- do you prefer traditional applique? What's your favorite fusible? What's your favorite stitch to use?

I'll close the giveaway on Monday at midnight and pick the winner Tuesday morning!

The giveaway is now closed and the winner is ShirleyC!

Don't forget to also check out the other stops on this week's hops!

Autumn in the Air Hop Schedule

Lisa @ Love to Color My World using Harvest Berry by Cheryl Haynes

Debby @ Debby Kratovil Quilts using Harvest Gold 

Sandra @ Mmm! Quilts using Thankful by Amanda Murphy

Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts using Faboolous Fun