I know I may have name dropped mentioned that I work at Gotham Quilts in Manhattan a few times. What I haven’t said is that they rarely, if ever have batik fabrics. I and my fellow employees have been hammering at the owners for years. A few months ago we were victorious! They ordered a whole shipment of batiks! We now have an entire cabinet devoted to them, and they are gorgeous.
You can check out the offerings here. To celebrate, I was given a bundle of fat quarters to make a sample quilt for the shop. Flight Club by Hunter’s Design Studio was the chosen pattern. Sam is awesome – I met her last year at QuiltCon, and I was smitten.
Flight Club requires 14 fat quarters and 3.5 yards of a background. I opted for a rainbow, of course. We went back and forth on a light or dark background for a while, but finally settled on black, and boy, was it a good choice.
Overall, I would say it is a great pattern for adventurous beginners. Since I’m an experienced pro, I skipped some of the marking of the flying geese, which was a mistake. When Sam says “mark your diagonals,” do it. Don’t be lazy – it will screw up your accuracy later on.
I intended to make the layout totally random, like Sam’s example, but I couldn’t. I started to put the random layout together, but it made me stressed. So, an easy assembly became more complicated, but the effort was worth it. I was so excited to get it onto the longarm.
Look at this beauty! I’m so happy with how it turned out. This is as random as I can get. I call it “lightly sorted”.
I used So Fine thread by Superior Threads to quilt it. The quilting pattern is called Modernish #1 and is available from Urban Elementz. It is a nice, loose, modern pattern. I just wanted something simple that wouldn’t fight with a busy quilt.
Quilt Specs
Dimensions – 54″ x 68″
Fabrics – Ketan by Banyan Batiks, Moda Black
Pattern – Flight Club by Hunter’s Design Studio
Quilting – Modernish #1 by Urban Elementz
Thread – So Fine by Superior in Black
Batting – Warm & Natural
I’ve done other shop samples in the past. I made Skyline and Fancy Forest, which are currently hanging. I’ve also quilted a bunch of the other quilts. I love going into the shop and seeing my work all over the walls.
Happy quilting!
You’ve made an absolutely gorgeous quilt with these awesome batiks. I’m headed right now to purchase the pattern….
…..just bought the pattern from Gotham Quilts….only 2 left, people…. 🙂
Woohoo! Have fun!
I love the color gradient you achieved with the flow of colors. The black really lets the bright colors pop and it looks like the pattern was a great use of all the fabrics.
Thanks, Yvonne. It is so much fun to see how different fabrics will play with each other.