Another Modern Challenge Quilt!

I guess it's time for me to eat a piece of humble pie.  Seems like in my hasty hour of inspiration to make my Modern Quilt Challenge for the May Island Batik Ambassador Challenge,  I neglected to do something very important for a challenge.  I forgot to read the guidelines!  Which said that our piece should be at least 36 x 36.  Oops!  So to make up for my error I decided I needed to get busy and make another quilt.  I've been wanting to make this particular design again for a while, so this was a good opportunity to do so.

I used more of the Coastal Mist Stack of 10 inch squares for this, plus some yardage.  The background is Soft Lilac Swirl Leaf, and I chose a dozen other squares to use for the circle cut outs and windows.  The pattern is Circle Around - it's a great quick quilt and looks awesome any way you make it!

I used a lightweight poly batting in this one because I thought it would be nice lightly quilted.  This quilt measures 48 x 48, perfect for a nice lap quilt.  The graphic circles definitely make it a modern quilt - very different from my first effort, but definitely just as modern!

It's tricky to catch the beauty of this fabric line - I love the subdued, yet rich look of the colors.  This quilt is for sale in my Etsy shop - it's a beautiful, soft quilt and would make a lovely lap quilt or throw.

Circle Quilt

Don't forget to keep an eye out for more challenge quilts!  Look for #modernbatikchallenge on social media to see more, or follow my fellow Island Batik Ambassador's blogs to see their creations!

Modern Batik Challenge - Finished!

I did quite a few hours of machine quilting this week, but I got it done!  I am pretty pleased with how my quilt turned out, and I learned that I should probably do smaller projects for the Island Batik challenges.

 But I had a vision for this quilt and I followed it through to the end, despite a very busy month.  I was inspired by a quilt I saw online when I looked for modern quilts using 10 inch squares.  I had a gorgeous Stack of Florida Oranges in my Ambassador box and the colors were so bold and vibrant I knew they would be perfect for the challenge!  I loaded up EQ7 and went to town designing a quilt using only large half square triangles and squares.  I wanted it to explode out of the center and this is what I came up with:

Sewing the top was easy and fairly painless - I did get my green triangles turned around and had to unpick all 8 of them and sew them correctly, but other than that it was fast and simple sewing.  For the background of this quilt I used Egg White - I love the little dots of color swirling on the light background - it really went well with the vibrant Florida Oranges line!

Then came the quilting, which I really wanted to be special.  I started out with an outline of what I thought would be interesting and progressed through a lot of marking to do the straight line quilting in the center of the diamonds and around the center square - you can see my progress for my first couple of days of quilting in these posts:  Part One and Part Two

When I last blogged I was thinking about what to quilt in the triangles around the blue diamonds.  I found my inspiration the very next morning when I was reading through some blog posts.  Angela Walters blog is one of my favorites, (her machine quilting is amazing!) - and this post about dot to dot quilting gave me the inspiration that I needed to fill in those triangles.

I was thrilled with the results!  My daughter commented on how perfect the lines were, but they aren't - it's just the overall effect that makes them look that way!

I used a light gray Aurifil 50 wt for the quilting.  I like the way it blends into the colors and subtly shows up on the background.  I think it was the perfect choice!

And now for the finished quilt:

Isn't it fun?  I am just thrilled with the results!  I usually like to make more traditional quilts, but I think this quilt is pretty amazing!

It's really heavy - lots of thread went into the quilting, nearly the whole spool!  I used another Island Batik for the binding, from the Lavish collection - it was a nice orange that went well with the rest of my fabrics.  Batiks are nice for mixing and matching between collections!

What do you think?  Did I meet the challenge and come up with a modern quilt made with batiks?   If you would like to see what the other Ambassadors came up with for their modern challenge, there are links to their blogs under the Island Batik Ambassador tab at the top of my blog.

Modern Batik Challenge Part Two

I am deep into the quilting on my Island Batik #modernbatikchallenge.  I kind of wish I had gone ahead and added the double batting, but it is way past too late now!  Yesterday I added some matchstick quilting in the center square channels

That fine controlled stitching makes my forearms ache!

After that I decided to do a sunburst as the filler for the center square:

This is a fun design to quilt, though I have a tendency to stitch myself into corners fairly often.  I have a couple spots where I accidentally stitched over the line, so will need to do a little unpicking, but I like how it came out.

Next I added the spiral stitching to the outer triangle channels.

That went really well, then I realized that I meant to add this deign element to the second channel. Oops.  I decided this was a great design opportunity and came up with the idea of adding some diamonds outside the blue diamonds to highlight them a bit more:

I think I will end up adding some filler to the outside ones to make them stand out a bit more.   I also added the facets to the diamond.  One down, three to go!  Next I went on to try out a filler for the outside background triangles.  Spirals and bubbles:

And finished up the day by adding the facets to the four orange butterfly corners:

Now I have lots of filler left to do as well as three blue diamonds.  I laid it over the cutting table and as I was about to leave looked back at it.  Looks pretty good so far, though the picture really doesn't it justice!

I have a big bag of alterations to work on today, but after that I'll get to work on this quilt - hopefully I can make more good progress so I can get this crossed off my list for the week.  I hope you have a productive Monday as well!

See more about making this quilt on the following blog posts:
Modern Batik Challenge Part 1

Modern Batik Challenge Part One

I've been challenging myself to work on some of those projects that I got started, but never have finished up.  My sewing room drawers are full of these pockets of good intentions and it's time to work through some of them!  Some time ago I was given several books of decorator samples.  I managed to cut all the fabric out of the books and intended to use it to make a number of projects, one of them being zipper pouches.  I even ordered a bundle of zippers and intended to make a bag or two every week.  Well, only a few bags got made, then the rest of the supplies got ditched out of sight.  This week I determined to put those zippers to use and get pouches made.  I did a good job!

I even got them all photographed and listed in my Etsy shop - my Bags, Checkbooks and Wallets section is nice and full now!  I had fun mixing and matching the zipper colors to the fabrics.  Some of them are a little imaginative, but I figure there is no reason something useful can't be pretty and fun, too!

I made a total of 38 of these zipper pouches.  Most of them measure about 7 inches wide and 5 inches tall.  They are all lined with different cotton prints, so are nicely finished inside.  So many pretty prints and colors that I definitely can't pick a favorite.

Other than working on a couple of alteration projects and getting back into my exercise routine with my husband that was my week.  I did get out my picture to work out the quilting design for my Modern Batik Challenge with Island Batik.  I did some looking at a lot of quilts on Pinterest and came up with a starting point for the quilting.

My idea kind of revolved around the facets cut in a diamond.  So I started from there and added some of my favorite types of ideas - I like the contrast of plain lines and quilted areas so tried to incorporate that idea, and I always love a transparency effect and saw that occuring with the yellow squares.  We'll see how it looks in real life.  I got the top basted on Friday thinking I would get the quilting started on Sunday.

I worked all day at the quilt shop, but when I got home really wanted to start quilting this.  So, when my husband went out to mow the back yard, I headed for the sewing room.  Frozen pizza for dinner meant no cooking and I decided I'd put that time to good use and get started.  I got the center done and am happy with that:

And I got the bulk of the straight line quilting done as well.  This is pretty tedious as it all needs to be marked first.  Tomorrow I'll be doing the freemotion quilting around the center and in the channels.  I'm still thinking about what to do with some of the areas, but I'm sure I'll think of something interesting.  One of the things I really like about modern quilting is that you aren't constrained to the design of the top, but can do something a little out of the ordinary to make the quilt shine!  I'm using a light gray thread for my quilting, so it really doesn't stand out a lot.  I debated using a double batt, but really didn't want that much bulk in this quilt.  I think I will try that on a smaller quilt first.

So far I am enjoying this challenge - I hope the quilting will look as good as I want it to.  It's fun to step out of my box and do something a little out of the ordinary, and I am enjoying my foray into Modern quilts.

For more about this quilt see the following blog posts:
Modern Batik Challenge Part 2