Tool Time with Island Batik

The Island Batik Ambassadors are split this month. Half of the team is doing a blog hop, and the other half is making a quilt with a fun quilting tool. I’m on the Tool Time Team.

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This month I’m going to focus on my favorite quilting templates – my 1/4 circle rulers from Jen Carlton Bailey. I’ve used these templates before, and I just love them. They make it easy to make beautiful, mind bending quilts.

Another plus this month is that Melanie Tuazon taught her Trill quilt at my local quilt guild! I have taken a class with Melanie before, and she is a great teacher.

Usually when I take a class, I’m pretty happy to just go with the flow, and see what happens. I find it a lot easier to just enjoy the process than to fret that the new technique isn’t doing exactly what I want it to. I see so many people get so frustrated when their projects don’t conform to their plan. That isn’t a good way to have fun.

For this class, since I’m familiar with the ruler, I may have sneaked and worked ahead. Melanie was very gracious, and sent me a coloring page for the pattern I wanted to make. I had the perfect Island Batik 10″ Stack for the job. This is Kaleidoscope, and I paired it with Buttermilk for a nice, creamy background.

For my pre-class prep, I took my stack apart, and chose the colors I wanted to use. I only needed to use 18, and the stack had 20.

Then, I went ahead and cut out my pieces.

Now, I like to play tricks on people. I have a reputation to uphold in my guild for being very fast. The longarm helps a lot. Being a little bit manic helps more. But, best of all, cheating really helps me to impress people.

With that in mind, I glue basted and pieced 2/3 of my quilt blocks. I also partially assembled the bottom trill shape, which is why you can find mistakes on it. I wasn’t 100% clear on how to trim my blocks. That’s why I still take classes.

My classmates did notice I was ahead of the curve pretty early on. (Pun intended.) Several of them purchased templates from Melanie in class, so they had to do their cutting. I just had to do some glue basting and was able to get right to sewing. Mom was also ahead – I cut hers out while I did mine. Efficiency!

I didn’t take any photos during class on Saturday. Sorry! So no in-progress photos. I fully pieced the center of my quilt in class, and did confess to doing some work at home. I can’t help it – I love piecing curves.

Saturday night I was able to add side panels, and quilt the piece. I used my computerized longarm to help, because I also had to cook dinner for 7 people for the following night. (I use trickery whenever possible. If you are coming to my house for dinner, it is usually made the night before and re-heated, so I can relax, too. I hate being a kitchen drudge while my family and guests hang out without me.) 60 meatballs later, my quilt was quilted, and I was exhausted. So, I trimmed it up, and brought it to the guild meeting on Sunday for a show-off Show and Tell session. The response was quite gratifying.

When I got home on Sunday, I tried to pick just the right binding. Unfortunately, my quilt wasn’t in the mood for a single fabric binding. It was insisting on a rainbow, cut from the leftovers from the 10″ stack. It didn’t take as long as I expected it to. And, miracle of miracles, 2 strips from each of the fabrics I used in the rainbow was EXACTLY enough to bind the whole quilt, with an invisible join.

The backing is a piece of Kaffe Fasset fabric I picked up at a yard sale. I confess, rarely do I use my Island Batik fabrics on the back of my Island Batik quilts. I just cannot stand to use it all up that way. Also, I mostly don’t care what the back of my quilt looks like. I hoard my precious batiks, because I never know when they might pick someone else instead of me as an ambassador. (Although, at this point, I could serve for three more years with no more fabric and still do them proud. Don’t tell them, please.)

I used Hobbs Heirloom Cotton batting for this project. It has such a fabulous drape. Hobbs battings are always consistent and a pleasure to work with.

The quilting pattern I chose is a great modern blend of my favorite motifs. It has feathers, swirls, pebbles, and straight line fills. It is Abalone, by Jessica Schick and Krista Withers for Urban Elementz. It is really dense, with a lot of back tracking and takes A LOT of thread and time.

If you ever have the opportunity to take a class with Melanie Tuazon, do it! (She’s teaching at Gotham Quilts this weekend!) This is my second class with her, and she is a sweet and gracious teacher. Her designs really excite me, and inspire me to get stitching. Also, a class is the only way to get this pattern right now. I’m going to have a hard time going back to sewing straight lines.

Okay. To circle back to the challenge of “Favorite Tools”. I highlighted my rulers from Jen Carlton Bailey already. I also used my Olfa Rotary Cutter – comfy and safe, because it has a lock. I have gradually replaced almost all of the rulers in my collection with Creative Grids. They are my favorites. Elmer’s glue sticks also played a key roll. My new Bernina 570 makes me happy every time I use it. My Eversewn Sparrow is my class machine – light enough for travel, but a solid quality machine. I use Aurifil 50 weight thread whenever I piece. My standard is their Dove Grey, which I buy by the cone. The star of my show is my Gammill longarm. It is reliable and always ready for me. It insists on threads by Superior. This project was quilted with So Fine 402, Pearl. (I do not name my robotics system, as I would not recommend it to others. When shopping for robotics “you get what you pay for” is not a cliché.) Urban Elementz is my favorite place to shop for quilting designs.

Quilt Specs
Dimensions – 67″ x 69″
Pattern – Trill by Melanie Tuazon
Fabrics – Kaleidoscope 10″ Stack and Buttermilk by Island Batik
Special Tools – 6 1/2″ Quarter Circle Template
Batting – Hobbs Heirloom Cotton
Quilting pattern – Abalone by Urban Elementz
Thread – So Fine 402, Pearl, by Superior

Special thanks to Island Batik, Hobbs, and Aurifil for providing the majority of supplies I used in this project. I love being part of the Island Batik Ambassador team.

Last, but not least, remember that every quilt has a baby? I have a pile of odd shapes left from my template cutting, and also these itty bitty triangles from the the rainbow binding. Along with a bit of buttermilk, maybe 1/2 yard, and a few full 10″ stack pieces. I’ve got a vacation coming up, and I think I’ll bring these with me and see what happens.