Pink Stars {Ready, Set, Go! Challenge Quilt}

My black and white and pink all over baby quilt is now finished!

After the top was together, I decided at the last minute that I wanted to use some of the solid grey batik fabric as my backing instead of my normal flannel-for-baby-quilts MO. As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics and Aurifil thread to use and share with you!

For the quilting, I use the same paisley floral motif that I recently used for my Bear Tracks baby quilt. I used white Aurifil thread and tried to keep my individual "flowers" about the size of an index card so that the quilting wouldn't be too dense.

I used black solid batik for the binding and used black thread to machine bind the quilt.

Now my challenge assignment is complete! Thank you as always to Island Batik for choosing me as ambassador and a really big thank you to Accuquilt for letting us play with your super fun machines! I will admit that I was skeptical of how much I would like using the Go! cutter and I really loving using it.

Quilt Stats:
Name: Pink Stars
Pattern: self-designed, based on classic quilt blocks
Size: 40" square
Fabrics: Island Batik basics and blenders
Quilting: paisley flowers in white Aurifil
Started: March 2019
Finished: April 2019

Sharing at Oh Scrap, Let's Bee Social, Wednesday Wait Loss, and Needle and Thread Thursday!

Ready, Set, Go! {More Blocks}

I've been working on some alternate blocks for my Ready, Set, Go! baby quilt challenge. I'm working on the "Mosaic" blocks this time around -- with a slightly modified color arrangement. 

Like before, the cutting for these blocks using the Accuquilt GO! cutter was fast! I like to keep the pieces stacked together in pairs and sets of four -- it makes it easier to keep track of the right side and wrong side of the batik fabrics.

For the Mosaic blocks, I'm using the pink Check it Out print and the black for these blocks is a snakeskin print! 

I made the flying geese first, then the square in a square blocks, and finally the half-square triangles.

One of my biggest struggles is making flying geese. I do better with the four-at-a-time method than the stitch and flip method, but I still sometimes have geese that end up a little wonky or have to make larger geese and trim them all down. All of my flying geese units made with the Accuquilt-cut units turned out nearly perfectly sized without having to trim. There will definitely be times where I'll choose this method over other flying geese methods going forward.

Bippity boppity boo -- eight perfect Mosaic blocks!

I interspersed these blocks with my previously made Depression blocks to see what my quilt will look like! I'm not planning to add sashing -- and I picked these blocks specifically for the secondary designs they create when paired -- can you see the broken dishes blocks that will appear in the intersections?

Now I have 14 finished blocks, and only 11 more to make! I'll need to make 6 additional Depression blocks and 5 additional Mosaic blocks. I have a few more black fabrics that will be mixed into my upcoming blocks but I believe I have enough of these two pink fabrics that I won't need to add in the third pink fabric that I set aside as a back up!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social!

Ready, Set, Go! Challenge with Accuquilt and Island Batik {Baby Quilt Beginnings}

Being an Island Batik Ambassador for the last three years has been an amazing experience with some pretty nice perks (Fabric! Thread! Batting! Connections with new quilters!) and this year Accuquilt has graciously given us a Go! Fabric cutter starter kit (not an affiliate link). So this month, our challenge is to use our cutters and dies to make a baby quilt! 

One of my fellow Ambassadors, Connie, already posted her finished quilt, but her post has a great photo line up of all that came in our starter kits from Accuquilt.

Asking me to make a baby quilt is hardly an imposition for me, since I am *always* making baby quilts. Besides being useful, it's a great way to test out blocks and techniques on a smaller scale.

Since I already have two finished boy quilts ready for gifting, I decided I would make a more girly quilt for this challenge. This is the first time in a while where I don't have a list of baby quilts that I need to make or send -- and now that I've said/written this, it probably means that I'll hear about 3-6 imminent arrivals.

For my fabrics for this challenge, I decided to go with pink, black, and white. My white is the same sprinkles print that I used last month. The black prints are various black and grey prints pulled from my stash builder rolls. I have two different hot pink fabrics pulled -- a paisley print left from my Dashing to the Chapel quilt and some pink from the Check It Out collection.

One of the cool things that came with the starter set from Accuquilt is a Quilt In A Day book from Eleanor Burns, which features lots of classic quilt blocks and the dies you need for each one. I decided to pick two blocks from this book to make a two block quilt -- the blocks I picked are called Depression and Mosaic.

I actually started working on this in March -- I cut the pieces and parts for six Depression blocks to use as leader and ender sewing. This block uses the 4, 5, and 6 dies from the 8" Qube set to make the half square triangles, flying geese, and square in a square units.

I focused on doing each type of unit from start to finish for all six blocks instead of making just one block at a time.

Now I have six blocks completed out of a goal of 25 blocks.

Cutting has long been a favorite part of the quilting process for me, so I don't know if I could give traditional cutting up entirely, but I will say that so far, I really enjoy using the Go! Cutter for specific projects and sizes and that I need to play around more with the dies that I do have!