2020 Island Batik Ambassador Unboxing

I'm so excited to be returning for a fourth year as an Island Batik Ambassador!

Today I have my unboxing video to share -- live from my freshly painted sewing room!

Here are all the items, in picture form!

Two king size battings from Hobbs:

Rayon yardage and a rayon scarf:

A block on board die from Accuquilt, two color builder boxes from Aurifil, and Schmetz needles:

Two stash builder packs:

A half yard bundle and two yard cuts of Mesa Verde: (which should be in your LQS soon!)

Yardages of solids and a basic batik:

Half yard cuts of blenders and solids:

A 10" stacker with coordinating yardage:

A 2.5" strip pack with coordinating yardage:

I'm so excited to use these over the next few months for some fun Ambassador challenges!

Clue #7, #8 Progress and a Test Block {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

The good thing about being behind on Frolic is that I can see how other people's quilts are coming together! I have been enjoying seeing all of the blocks people are putting together on Instagram and I am very jealous of those who have had the time/patience/ability to get their quilt tops finished!

The bad thing about being behind is that it seems like somewhat of an insurmountable task! I'm making some progress, most certainly. I've found that it is kind of hard to get to a stopping point with this project because I just want to keep going with the units.

I have *technically* finished all of the units for Clue #8 per the directions but haven't sorted my units into block groupings. I made all of the aqua/blue/coral flying geese and trimmed them.

I also managed to finish up the coral/navy HSTs which will be used to make the pinwheel centers of the blocks. I haven't gotten many trimmed.

I have trimmed a few HSTs though -- because I put together a test block!

First and foremost, WOW! As complicated as the directions seemed to be at times, I have found everything is coming together quite nicely! I have a tentative plan on modifying my quilt to be slightly larger, but for now, I am going to make all of my full blocks using the navy fabrics before moving onto my dark teal blocks. I will need to go back and make the dark teal/coral/aqua flying geese and dark teal/coral HSTs, but for now, I need a mental break from making units.

I also have quite a bit of cutting to do, particularly of my background fabric, to be able to put together blocks and sashing. I wish there was more strip piecing I could do going forward, but it will be a one-block-at-a-time thing to finish this quilt.

Please pop back in on Thursday as I will be sharing all of the goodies in my newest Island Batik Amabassador box!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!

Refresh {Sewing Room Redo}

When we moved last year, we decided to put off painting the smallest bedroom which I use as my sewing room because it was just plain white (and not a horrendous pink like our bedroom) and the other things we needed to do were much more pressing.

Now that we are into Year Two of home ownership, the pressing things have been crossed off the list and we can start doing some wish list items -- including painting my sewing room!

While the room was white, it was very greyed. I don't know if that's because of how long it has been since it had been last painted, or if it the paint had grey undertones. Either way, even though the room was white, it was still rather drab. My husband and I picked a yellow-leaning tan (Cameo Creme from Sherwin Williams) for the walls.

Here is the room prior to painting:

The second component of this is that the room was in major need of an organization overhaul, which is happening in conjunction with the room being put back together.

We moved some things out of the room, and got the room taped on Sunday. Sewing creates a lot of dust bunnies!

In some lights, the color looks darker than others, and of course there is a color difference in wet vs. dry paint.

Given that my closet doors are white, I wanted to make sure that the paint was dark enough to contrast with the white. I think that the yellow/cream makes it much warmer, which was the main issue with the dingy white it was before.

This angle looks a little darker than it actually is.

My room is put together in nearly the exact same way, but it has been good to mindfully sort through my stuff and reorganize it.

The sort of open drawer in the picture above is my "drawer of shame". It's all the fabric that I have been finding in bits and bobs that isn't in the place that it should be. My plan is to work on a little pile every time that I sew and get those pieces back into the right scrap bins. As of right now the room is about 90% back together and then next week I am hoping to hang a few things on the walls!

Happy Friday!

Blue Moon {Winter Blues Blog Hop}

Today I am participating in the Winter Blues blog hop hosted by Carla at Creatin' in the Sticks...

...and I am sharing a scrappy project for my Island Batik Ambassador project for January!

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!

For my project, I decided to play with the scraps I had left over from the Starburst wall hanging I made for my August Island Batik Ambassador project. I had a quite a few of the 2.5" strips left over from the Sand Bar strip set and focused on using these for my project.

For a while, I have needed to make a new set of placemats -- one set that had six placemats instead of my usual four. Four is usually an easy number to make because you can use a single yard of fabric to back all four placemats and usually I don't need more than four. However, now that we are living in a house instead of an apartment (and I very much enjoy being the hostess with the mostest) I need at least one set of 6 placemats.

I used a modified version of the "jelly roll race" technique to make the base of my placemats. All together, I used about 20 strips. To begin, I sewed all but two of my 2.5" strips together on the diagonal (like you'd join binding strips) and pressed those seams open. I sewed my strip set in half three times so that my strip set was eight fabric strips wide and about 80"-85" long and then added one more 2.5" fabric strip so that my strip set was nine fabric strips wide. From there, I subcut my strip set in to six rectangles, 18.5" wide and 12.5" long.

Some of my subcut rectangles have more color changes than others, but this was much faster than trying to piece each one individually!

Next, I quilted each placemat -- I used two different fabrics for the backings, the navy/teal feather batik and the light blue cheerio print. I used the same teal variegated Aurifil thread as the top thread for all six placemats, however, I used a bunch of different colors in my bobbins to use up bobbin scraps! I used navy, emerald green, light teal, and even a bit of purple!

These pictures show the placemats before trimming -- I roughly cut the backing and the batting for each placemat before I quilted it. And in the effort of using scraps, I also used scraps of Hobbs batting left over from previous Ambassador projects in these placemats. I had some larger scraps that I used for four of them and then pieced scrap battings for the final two placemats.

Since I know these will be going through the washing machine and used repeatedly, I'm not too concerned about the backings not all being the same -- and the same for the binding! I used three different fabrics for the bindings. For placemats, I always sew my bindings completely by machine.

Now my table is ready for my next dinner party!

Make sure to check out all of the other bloggers hopping today and check out the full schedule on Carla's blog!

Wednesday, January 22nd

Little Bunny Quilts

For the love of geese

The Joyful Quilter

Ms P Designs USA
Quilt Schmilt
Karen's Korner
Made By Marney
Podunk Pretties
Sunshine in the Attic

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Clue #4, #7, #8 Progress {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

After a long delay, I have finally finished Clue #4 for my Frolic mystery quilt! While the final reveal came out today, I am not as behind as I thought I might be.

To finish up Clue #4, I made all of the necessary sets of HSTs in navy, dark teal, and aqua.

I split up my aquas so that I used half of the different prints to make the aqua/navy HSTs and the other half of the prints to make the aqua/dark teal HSTs.

The left and center aquas are from my Pineapple Log Cabin quilt, the gingham check is a fat quarter I pulled out of a bundle, and the dot is from my April Showers quilt.

The umbrella print and raindrop print are from my April Showers quilt, the pearl chain dot is my Pineapple Log Cabin quilt, and the bubble dot print is a fat quarter of unknown origin.

(The beautiful print I used as my background is actually the back of one of my Wanderlust placemats.)

I also finished up the cutting for Clue #7.

But I decided that I needed a break from HSTs (which is what I would be making in Clue #7) and I decided that I wanted to skip to making more flying geese in Clue #8 instead! I am part of the way through sewing the blue triangles to one side of the units.

Some of my predictions about the quilt were very wrong, and some were right! I definitely like the blocks and the setting, but I am not necessarily in love with the pieced borders. I am going to think about actually making the center of my quilt LARGER and eliminating the pieced borders. I have lots of options, and I really love the main block of the quilt!

If you are Frolic-ing, what do you think of the reveal? Is it what you predicted? I predicted a quilt on point however I did not think we would have sashing.

Have a lovely weekend!