Twirls and Stripes {Finished Quilt}

It's time to show off my finished vintage inspired quilt and compare it to its inspiration!

My finished quilt:

The original quilt:

After finishing the quilt, I decided to see if I had any Hobbs batting in my Island Batik Ambassador box that would be the right size for my 40 x 48 baby quilt -- and I was in luck! 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!

In my box, I had a crib size (45" x 60") cotton batting that fit the bill perfectly. I also got flannel for the backing, which I did have to piece but better pieced than too small, right?

For the quilting, I just did a simple bubbly meander in white thread, starting in the middle of the quilt and working out. I trimmed the batting and backing 1/2" beyond the edge of the quilt to prep it for binding.

I don't always manage to get a good photo that shows off the quilting as well as this one does! All of the straight lines in the quilt begged for some curvilicious quilting.

I cut yellow strips from a dotty batik print for my binding and decided that I wanted to sew the binding by hand to the back. And what luck! I had some perfectly colored yellow thread too!

This baby quilt hasn't been earmarked for anyone yet, but I doubt it will be waiting long for a little miss or little mister! This one seems to be a perfect gender-neutral quilt.

I'm also sure that I will make more baby quilts using this two-block quilt design! It's always good to have something quick and easy like this in the arsenal for baby quilts.

Quilt Stats:
Name: Twirls and Stripes
Pattern: self-designed, based on a vintage quilt
Size: 40" x 48"
Fabrics: Island Batik basics and blenders, flannel backing
Quilting: bubble meander in white thread
Started: February 2019
Finished: March 2019

Sharing at Wednesday Wait Loss, Needle and Thread Thursday, Brag about your Beauties, and What I Made Monday! Oh and this is also my Favorite March Finish!

Twirls and Stripes {Vintage Reimagined with Island Batik}

My life has been filled with a lot of strip piecing recently! Both with Unit A for the Daisy Chain QAL, and with this project!

After cutting the pieces and parts for this project, zipping together my "striped fabric" strip sets was the next step.

The HSTs went together quickly as well. I'm using two different orange fabrics and one yellow fabric for these units.

Subcutting the strip sets into blocks went slightly faster than trimming all of my HSTs, as you might have imagined.

Chain piecing all of the pinwheels was also a quick process -- here are the piles of blocks stacked together before I laid out my blocks.

Because I was able to squeeze five 8.5" squares out of each strip set (Island Batik fabrics are *actually* more than 42" wide selvage to selvage!) I do have enough blocks to do a 5x6 block arrangement for a 40" x 48" quilt and only one extra yellow pinwheel!

Here's the quilt blocks sewn into rows. Whenever possible, I like to use the "webbing" technique to put together my quilt tops. I realize now it might be worthwhile to do my own webbing tutorial, so keep your eyes out for one in the coming weeks/months. But for the time being, check out a tutorial from Bonnie Hunter.

Five seams later and I have a finished quilt top!

Now to find some backing fabric for this quilt. I'm leaning towards flannel since I will likely give it as a baby quilt but now that I don't live 5 minutes away from Joann's, I'll have to make a special trip this weekend. And after the super-shrinkage snafu that happened with the last bunch of flannel that I bought, I'm going to get an extra 1/4 yard just to be safe!

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

Vintage Reimagined {March IBA Challenge}

This month's Island Batik Ambassador theme is "Vintage Reimagined"!

Our task this month is to take inspiration from a vintage quilt to create something new! Last year, for this theme, I created this baby quilt inspired by a quilt at the Antietam Battlefield museum.

This year, I'm taking my inspiration from another quilt from a battlefield -- this time from Gettysburg! This quilt is in the collection at Gettysburg, but isn't typically out for display.

About this quilt, from the Gettysburg National Military Park collection:

"This thin top layer of a Civil War-era cotton quilt was given to young Helen Mills of Gettysburg by a Union soldier during the pursuit of General Lee’s army on July 5 or 6, 1863. Helen lived on a farm on the Taneytown Road south of Gettysburg. Citizens of Gettysburg and the surrounding community were literally inundated not only with the wounded after the battle, but the numerous articles of war that came with and were left by two massive armies."

Since I now live in Gettysburg, I thought this quilt was an excellent inspiration for this challenge. I decided to simplify the color scheme to white, blue, yellow, and orange. I really love this aqua-blue batik -- it reminds me of free motion quilting designs! As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics to use and share with you!

The original quilt is made up of pinwheel blocks that alternate with a striped blue-and-white fabric, except on the right edge where it looks like they ran out of the striped fabric! Since I don't have any batik fabrics with a similar large stripe, I am going to make rail fence blocks with the white and blue fabrics to alternate with my yellow and orange pinwheel blocks.

While I've never seen this quilt in person, my estimation is that the blocks are somewhere between 4" and 6" finished in this quilt. I'm going to be making bigger blocks that are 8" finished for my quilt, so that I can use 2.5" strips for my rail fence "stripes" and 5" squares for my pinwheel HSTs.

With a half yard of the blue fabric, I should be able to make a 40" square baby quilt. If I'm able to squeeze out an extra block or two from my strip sets, I could enlarge the quilt to 40" by 48", but the goal is 40" square, which is my favorite size for baby quilts.

My next step is making my "striped fabric" strip sets and making half-square triangles for my pinwheel blocks!

Happy Wednesday! Sharing at Let's Bee Social and NTT!