Crosscut Table Runner {Whimsical and Wonky}

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

While I still might not be done with Clue #3 for Good Fortune (and Clue #4 comes out tomorrow!), I did finish up my Island Batik Ambassador project for December! In my last post, I shared about how I used the Crosscut technique from A Quilter's Table to make the top of this table runner!

I quilted my table runner with grey Aurifil thread in both the top and the bobbin, and it looks great against the different shades of blue! I also used the blue dot fabric for the backing.

For the binding, I used a navy blue swirl batik. I had a fat quarter, so I used nearly all of it for this binding! I was fortunate that despite having more binding seams than normal, I didn't end up with any too close to the corners!

While the lighting isn't 100% ideal in this photo, it does show off my bear claw quilting! This is a motif I haven't worked with a lot and I had a little bit of trouble keeping my claw sizes consistent but was good practice on a small piece like this.

And just for fun -- a quilts in the wild sighting! Our Christmas tree at work was lacking a tree skirt, so I brought in my Sparkle Tree Skirt. This tree skirt is too small for my tree at home, so I wasn't using it, and it is the perfect size for our tree at work!

Happy Thursday! Sharing at Brag about your Beauties!

Whimsical and Wonky {December IBA Challenge + Giveaway}

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

This month's Island Batik Ambassador theme is Whimsical and Wonky! I decided that this month I would try a technique that's been on my pin board for a long while -- the crosscut block technique from A Quilter's Table! I decided that I would use this technique to make a table runner with the leftover London Fog fabrics I have.

For my base blocks, I used 10.5" squares and 1.25" strips for the "cross" part of the blocks.

I wasn't overly precise with my cutting and sewing but I wasn't necessarily intentionally wonky in making my starting X blocks. Here are my untrimmed blocks before they were sewn together.

I trimmed each block to 10" and sewed the nine blocks together. A few of these blocks were cut with a little "wonk" to give the intersections a little more interest.

Next came the fun part -- cutting the original "top" into 6.5" squares! I picked 6.5" squares because I have a 6.5" ruler and that made it easier than trying to cut smaller or larger sizes. From my "top" I was able to cut 18 6.5" squares -- I had to sew a few large leftover pieces together for the last couple 6.5" blocks.

With 18 blocks, my table runner is 6 blocks long and 3 blocks wide, or 36" x 18".

Now to decide how to quilt and bind this abstract beauty!

And since I haven't done a giveaway in a while -- there's one today!

Today's giveaway is the remainder of my London Fog strip pack -- 24 strips in total! There are one of some patterns and two of others.

Comments for entries, up to two entries per person:
1. Leave one comment telling me what your favorite thing to sew with 2.5" strips
2. Leave a second comment if you follow me in some form or fashion: Bloglovin, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever other way you choose to follow!

Giveaway will close on December 11th (Tuesday) at midnight!

Update: our winner is Mary from Texas!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!

Batiks Gone Modern {Making Wonky Crosses In Bulk}

It's time for Batiks Gone Modern, Episode 2: Attack of the Wonky Crosses!

To recap, I'm making a abstract Mount Everest out of wonky crosses, using 5 shades of purple batiks.

First the winner of my batik giveaway:

Congrats, Rachel! A fun bundle of your favorite colors will be on its way to you soon!

Today I'm going to talk about my process of making wonky cross blocks in bulk. I will preface this post with the disclaimer that I am not the wonky-est blogger on the block. I think that most people will tend to call my blocks "controlled wonky" but this is who I am as a person. I'm also slightly limited because of the small size of my cross blocks -- these will finish at 3 inches square, which is the same size as a Post-It note, for scale.

Now onto the sewing!

For the purposes of this tutorial, I'm going to be working with fabrics #3 and #4. For these blocks my darker fabric will always be my "cross" and the lighter fabric is the background.

To make approximately 6 blocks, cut the following
1 - 3.5 inches x 22 inch (half width of fabric) rectangle of your background fabric
2 - 1.5 inches x WOF strip of your cross fabric -- cut one strip in half

Lay your 3.5 inch x 20 inch rectangle on your cutting mat. Using a long ruler, cut a diagonal cut lengthwise through the rectangle, creating two halves. The start and end of your cut should be at least 1 inch from the corner so that your cross doesn't end up too close to the edge of the block (which I learned the hard way!)

Sew both halves of the background fabric to your shorter 1.5 inch strip, pressing toward your darker fabric, aware of potential stretch along the bias.

Measure the length of your new unit, and cut 5 or 6 sections of equal width. For mine, my piece was 22.25 inches long so I cut sections 3.75 inches wide. You do not need to worry a lot about the "rough ends" since we'll be trimming our blocks at the end!

At this point, you can slice your block in half in any direction of your choice to create the space for the second half of your cross. I varied the angle at which my second piece crossed the first piece. I sewed all of my first half of each block to the same 1.5 inch strip, then cut the strip apart and pressed. I then added the second half of each block and pressed.

Now it's time to trim all of our blocks to our desired size - 3.5 inches. You can also use this step to vary the angles of your crosses within the blocks. Most of my untrimmed blocks were about 4 inches square so I had some wiggle room in determining how I wanted my final blocks to look.

And we just made 6 wonky cross blocks and saved a little bit of time by being able to strip piece and chain piece our blocks (at least part of the time!)

For this project, I made a total of 59 wonky cross units in four different fabric pairs for my ombre Everest:
16 - dark dot print fabric + dark tonal
16 - dark tonal + medium tonal
12 - medium tonal + medium burst print (shown above)
15 - medium burst print + light tonal

Next week, I'll be posting about putting the top together and the final product! I've already planned my quilting idea out and am excited to see if it will work or not!

Sharing at Tips and Tutorials Tuesday at Quilting Jet Girl, Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, and NTT at My Quilt Infatuation!

Sharing at Show Me Something {Purple} at Sarah Goer Quilts for January 2020!

Stash Bee March 2017 {Freeform Log Cabins}

This month for the Stash Bee, our Queen Bee Patty asked for Gwen Marston inspired log cabin blocks. I was rather excited about this -- thinking that like last month I would be able to use up a lot of scraps.

It sort of turned out to be a debacle.

First off, when I started pulling fabrics, I realized how truly few solids that I have which doesn't work well when your queen bee requests all or nearly all solids for a block. So I pulled in some near solids and figured I would minimize them and set off to work.

I made two blocks...

...and I hated them. The tonals and small scale prints were just too much and both blocks just seemed on the haphazard side of freeform. Some of the piecing of the dark accents was too large. I have literally never been this unhappy with bee blocks before.

So I did the only reasonable thing and chopped them all apart, salvaged the solid pieces and a few block sections, and then set out to work again. I pulled some additional solid fat quarters that I found buried deep in my stash and set off for round two.

This time I was much happier with my block.

So thus endeth the saga of bee blocks for March. I would very much enjoy not making more blocks like this for a while!

Sharing at Oh Scrap!

July Stash Bee Block

This month Francine requested a wonky pinwheel block. I'd never made one before and it was very fun! I only had one section that I had to redo because it wasn't big enough.

Here's each of the blocks with one of the spokes sewn on each one:

Here's all 16 of the units trimmed and pressed:

Here's the finished block all put together:

Aren't these colors great?

Happy Thursday to you!

February Stash Bee Blocks

This month, Pauline requested us to make wonky houses. Normally, I am not much into wonky blocks and improv piecing, but this was very fun and liberating! And I used basically all scraps for the blocks. Major win.

Happy Saturday to you!