Simple Squares {Finished Quilt}

Today I'm excited to show off my finished quilt for our April Island Batik Ambassador challenge! Our theme was "creative borders and bindings".

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

My quilt is made entirely of 4.5" squares cut from Island Batik stash builder rolls and 4.5" strips of black solid batik to break up the inner 64-patch from the pieced outer border. 

I also used the same black solid for the backing and the binding of the quilt. The border and backing really shows off my leafy swirl quilting!

I used a variegated teal Aurifil thread for the top of the quilt and used a lighter teal in the bobbins. Some of the fabrics highlight the darker teal in the variegated thread and other fabrics show off the lighter teals! The black inner border shows off all of the quilting -- and I only used a single spool of thread throughout the whole quilt and got vastly different levels of thread contrast!

This quilt is finished and ready for snuggles! My intention is to keep this quilt for a picnic quilt (all of those dark colors will hide stains!)

Happy Thursday! Don't forget that our Etsy shop is still stocked and shipping!

Previous posts:
Cutting and Planning post
Quilt top post

Quilt Stats:
Name: Simple Squares throw quilt
Pattern: self designed
Fabrics: Island Batik stash builder rolls, Island Batik solid
Techniques: free motion quilting
Quilting: Free motion leaves and swirls with Aurifil thread
Batting: Hobbs 80/20 batting
Size: 48" square
Started and Finished: April 2020
Future: Picnic Quilt

Blocked Borders {April IBA Challenge}

I've taken my cut squares for my April Island Batik Ambassador project from squares...

... to a quilt center...

... to a finished quilt top!

My first border is black Island Batik Solid. I used my remaining cut squares for my final border. I am so excited about this quilt top because it is a fun, simple quilt (no triangles!) that has a fun *pop* of black that kind of gives it a three-dimensional look.

For the quilting, I am planning to use a teal varigated thread that will blend with my batiks but will contrast with my solid black inner border. My binding and backing will be the same black solid for even more contrast! This will be a fun picnic quilt for us this summer.

What are you working on this weekend? I'll be quilting this quilt and hopefully starting a new baby quilt!

Good Fortune {75%}

A little progress is better than no progress, right? I had big plans to start quilting a quilt on Saturday, but that got kicked to the wayside. I hemmed some curtains on Saturday (go me!) but that was the extent of my sewing.

Sunday afternoon I went back to work on Good Fortune. My first task was to get the spacer border added. I double checked my math and cut my background strips. These zipped on extremely quickly, other than the fact that one WOF was *just barely* too short for the sides, so all four border strips had to be pieced.

Next came the arduous task of making the chains of HSTs for the green sawtooth border. I realized that I didn't have quite enough HSTs for all four sides, but figured that I would rather get as far as I could get and then figure out exactly how many more green HSTs I would need.

First border added:

(I also realized how badly my ironing board needs recovered -- not the usual reason of the fabric being ripped to shreds, but because there's this rather large divot in the one end that made pressing the borders somewhat difficult.)

With the HSTs that I already had made, I was able to complete three of the four sides, and start the piecing of the fourth and final side. Much of the border wobbly-ness that I was slightly worried about after adding my spacer border as been evened out after adding the HST border.

So now I'm back to making HSTs. All are sewn and ready to be trimmed and pressed.

Bonnie's directions have a neutral border between the green HSTs and the blue QSTs, however my quilt top is currently the perfect size for adding the blue QST border with an even number of units. That would mean skipping the neutral border between the pieced border -or- adding a much wider pieced border to get the quilt width to the right size. 

I will need to make about a dozen more QST units, so I am leaning towards skipping this spacer border because I am almost out of background fabric. My quilt will then end up around 54", which is right about the same size as my finished ORL quilt. I've seen some other creative solutions on the Quiltville Facebook group that I might also consider.

What do you think? Check out Bonnie's finished version of the quilt here and give me all of your creative solutions.

Sharing at Oh Scrap, Linky Tuesday, and Needle and Thread Thursday!

Update 2/11/19:
Also sharing at Bonnie's final Good Fortune link up! I have made some progress on the quilt since I wrote this blog post, so hopefully I will be able to share my finished top by the end of this week!

-- A@LBQ

Good Fortune {Spinning Stars and Border Beginnings}

My Good Fortune quilt is no longer units and blocks -- it's the beginning of a quilt top and units waiting to be turned into borders, hooray!

Pairing up my HST sets and half-chevrons to make the block quarters for my Spinning Star units was a quick and easy process. Getting the quarters into blocks was also quick and easy -- the seams nested perfectly and within a short while, all of my blocks were complete!

There's definitely a lot of the lighter blue lattice print (in the block corners) in these units, but ending up with a lot of blue lattice HSTs was much better than buying extra fabric for this project! I'm also SO happy with my decision to be fussy about the stripe in my green print -- I think the stripes add to the swirling effect of the block.

Following Bonnie's pressing directions meant that all of my seams nested like a dream while putting together my Spinning Stars and String Chain blocks into the center of the top.

Seeing the quilt center complete reaffirms that I made the right decision for my color scheme. I love how the green pinwheels pop and the red four patches remind me of little red berries.

I'm skipping the string border sections, so I used background rectangles combined with the remaining HSTs for the first border. I made all of my border HST units the same and then pulled four more HSTs of the same fabric for the four corners.

Now I come to a bit of a pickle. Because of sizing my quilt down, the next pieced border won't fit correctly with an even number of units, so I will need to add a spacer border. I originally thought about doing a green border, cut that green border, and then realized that I had done my math wrong. Whoops.

I think ultimately this is a blessing in disguise because I think a background spacer border will be a better choice and I can probably use the green strips that I already cut as the next spacer border. A quilt with three pieced borders is definitely easier if you are making the prescribed size of quilt! 

This weekend, my plan is to actually put this away for a few days so that I can do some quilting (!!!) for the first time since the move. I still need to find a border fabric for my January UFO project too, as the end of the month is quickly approaching. 

What are your weekend sewing plans? Do you find yourself at a project impasse?

Happy Friday!

Christine's Kitchen QAL {Week 10}

Welcome back to Week 10 of the Christine's Kitchen QAL! Today we're making the pieced border for our quilt!

The most important thing about making pieced borders is making sure that you've accurately made your quilt center and that you accurately make your pieced border -- size matters, cutting accuracy matters, seam allowance matters.

I strip pieced my pairs of background and print fabrics (always pressing to the print fabric) from the large scraps I had from piecing my blocks. I did mine randomly, but Amanda did hers in just two colors, which gives her a totally different look!

You can also see that Amanda added in a few extra flowers to her quilt too! Make sure that your four patch sections "pair up" at the corners -- take a few minutes to make sure that your rows start and end with the correct pattern.

No giveaway this week, and next week is our off week, but we will have multiple giveaways for those who send in finished quilt pictures for the quilt parade! Once you've finished your quilt top and/or quilted and bound your quilt, email me a picture of your finished quilt or finished top at littlebunnyquilts@gmail.com to be entered to win some wrap up prizes!

Thinking about joining in late? There is still a lot of time to catch up before the final quilt parade in June!

March 20th: Blocks 1 and 2; sashing
March 27th: Blocks 3 and 4; building Row #1
April 3rd: Block 5; sashing
April 10th: Blocks 6 and 7
April 17th: Blocks 8 and 9; building Row #3
April 24th: Blocks 10 and 11; sashing
May 1st: Block 12; sashing, building Row #4
May 8th: Applique blocks, building Row #2
May 15th: Setting
May 22nd: Border and finishing (you are here!)
May 29th: Memorial Day break
June 5th: Show off your quilt!

Sharing at Linky Tuesday!

Sassy Chevron Borders Tutorial

For my Lazy Sunday Mystery Quilt, I decided that I didn't want to make the borders as directed.

Too many stitch and flip triangles (also known as, too much waste!).

I decided that I wanted to use fast flying geese instead and came up with a really fun border idea. Maybe someone else already thought of this, but I'm super proud of myself for figuring this out and figured I should share.

Scared? Don't be! This whole border is entirely flying geese! The clever part of this whole thing is color placement.

I'm making my borders with goose units that are 2" x 4" finished (2.5" x 4.5" unfinished).

Square cutting:
This can be found all over the internet, but it bears repeating.
Cut one square for your "geese" that is 1 1/4 inches larger than the height (long side) of your finished goose rectangle. (4 inches finished + 1 1/4 inches = 5 1/4 inches square)
Cut 4 squares for your "background" that is 7/8 inch larger than the width (short side) of your finished goose rectangle (2 inches finished + 7/8 inch = 2 7/8 inches square

Draw diagonal lines down each of your "background" squares.

Line up two of your background squares along one of the diagonals of the goose square.

Sew 1/4" away on each side of the line and cut along the marked line. I use scissors so I don't have to walk over to my cutting space.

Iron background triangles away from your goose triangles.

Line up your remaining two marked background triangles, one on each of the cut halves, with the remaining 90 degree corner. Again, stitch 1/4" away from each side of the marked line.

Cut part along the marked line.

Iron background triangles away from the goose triangles. Trim off dog ears and gaze in awe at your amazing four finished flying geese.

For each chevron unit, you need oppositely colored flying geese. I called the light peach my "background" and my orange (or pink) fabric as my "chevrons".

To make each chevron unit, just sew together along your "chevron" fabric so that both geese point in the same direction and the colored background from one goose unit connects to the colored goose triangle of the other goose unit.

I had to use two different fabrics to have enough to have a border all the way around my quilt. For the most part they alternated pink, orange but I had to sneak in a few more pink units because I ran out of orange!

To attach it to my quilt. I just added goose units until it was equal to or ever so slightly longer than the side of the quilt that I was working on and eased if necessary.

Here's the quilt with all of the borders added:

This is one of my first forays into pieced borders and I think it turned out pretty nice! Obviously, accuracy is key in making sure that your borders fit your quilt correctly (and that one side isn't inches longer than the other!). This would be a really fun addition to a medallion type quilt as a skinnier border separating rings of blocks, I think.

Tuck this one away in your hats for a future project!

WIP Wednesday: Bordering on insanity

I had fully intended to do a post between the last time I talked about my Lazy Sunday Mystery Quilt and now, but that clearly didn't happen.

Since I couldn't make additional blocks, I first planned to make it twin size and to just put simple borders on the quilt instead of the pieced borders that the pattern directs. I used my light blue fabric for the innermost border and then decided that I did want to do at least one pieced border so I came up with what I think is clever:

It looks complicated, but it is just strategically colored fast flying geese units! I will hopefully have a tutorial on how to do this in the next few days!

Here's the top laid out on my queen sized bed. It surprised me that the length was just about perfect!

So after consulting my quilt spirit guide (aka my husband) I decided to put 12 inch borders on the sides and a 2 inch border on the top and the bottom so that it would end up queen sized.

Here's what the corner looks like:

And here is entire quilt top!

Another one to add to the "not quilted" WIP pile.

Linking up at Freshly Pieced!

Weekend Piecing

I started putting together some of the blocks that I have received thus far from being the Queen Bee in the Stash Bee last month. I have a few more that are currently on their way to me so I will finish piecing it all once I receive all of them.

Here's 16 blocks put together thus far:

I can't wait to get the rest of them and put it all together! I will end up with at least 36 blocks -- so this one will end up pretty large! I am planning to make it into a picnic and beach quilt. :)

I finally added the side borders to the Harry Potter paper pieced quilt. I strip pieced the two side borders from 5 strips of light and dark brown fabric and then sewed them together staggered to make the final diamond like pattern. I am very happy with it and probably won't add any more borders to it. Now it just needs quilting! Hooray!

Here's a close up of the trimmed and sewed side border. The way that I cut and sewed the two wood grain fabrics together ended up with the light grain going one way and the dark grain going the other so that they look woven! Hooray for happy accidents!

Happy Sunday to you all!