Springtime Migration

We are enjoying a very white winter here in New England. Rest assured Spring is coming! I have been working with the Island Batik Elementz Collection. This collection is very bright and cheerful.  There are modern elements such as triangles, bar lines, and arrows too! Here’s a peek at the fat quarters I received to create a quilt larger than 36″ x 36″. The colors range from black, grey, pinks, oranges, lime green, blues, yellows and combinations that are very cool! I used a blender for the background fabric. It’s the light fabric on the right in the photo below.

 My quilt and table runner are simple to make and “sew” much fun too! This is my first 2-sided quilt with all Island Batik fabrics! The idea popped into my head probably because I attended a guild meeting last year in which people showed 2-sided quilts. One quilter made a much larger scale design on the back side as the design from the front. Thanks for sharing that idea, whoever you are. It certainly inspired me. This is a 2-sided quilt with a similar concept.

Here’s the front:

and here’s the back:

I started with cutting the fat quarters efficiently, so I could maximize the usage.

I love my Martelli cutter with a new blade in it.  It can accurately cut several layers at once. Below is a photo of the strips I cut to make squares for the migrating geese and strips for the bars.

This pattern requires 6 1/4″ squares for the migrating geese, 2 1/2″ x 7 1/2″ fabric bars for the front and 9 1/4″ squares and 3 3/4″ x 15″ fabric bars for the back.

The complete pattern is available on craftsy.com, click here:

I purchased a Studio 180 Design Migrating Geese Technique Sheet from Bonny Peters, owner of Catdenmountainquilts.com. If you would like to purchase this technique sheet, which I highly recommend, Click Here.

There are 3 reasons I really like this technique sheet:

1. It is laminated and has 3 holes in it so I can hang it from my hook on a curtain rod in my studio. It hangs with my rulers so it is easy to find and use. You could put it into a 3-ring binder, but a binder would surely get moved several times and eventually lost in my studio. (true confession!)
2. It has cutting instructions for 7 different size migrating geese.
3. The photos and sewing instructions are very easy to read,understand and follow.

Thank you Studio 180 Design!

This is a scrappy quilt. I wanted to show as many of the fabrics and designs as possible. This quilt has 5 columns, 2 columns with fabrics bars 2″ x 7″ finished and 3 columns of migrating geese.

Remember that you could design your quilt with 3 columns of fabric bars and 2 columns of migrating geese if you like the geese bound by the bars.

I chose 3 columns of migrating geese because geese often migrate in a v-shape.

The back side is made from 2 columns of fabric bars 3 1/4″ x 14 1/2″ with 4″ high migrating geese along the center. This is my version of enlarging the basic design from the front of the quilt.

I had so much fun making migrating geese and using the leftover fabric bars I cut, that I made a table runner too!

Quilting these fun quilts:

This is my favorite part of the process! I reached for my Leaves Galore ruler by Sue Pelland Designs. I traced a curve and mirrored it on the top.  That was all the marking I did. Then I stitched along the curve, echoed the curve, and added some free motion feathers (because migrating birds have feathers, right?) along the outer curves.

I cut the binding for the quilt 2″ wide and used leftover fabric bars sewn on the diagonal. I folded the strip in half and machine stitched it onto the front and hand sewed the fold on the back.

For the table runner I cut my binding 1 3/8″ and stitched in onto the front and hand stitched a single fold binding onto the back. This makes the table runner lay flatter in my drawer.

This blog hop continues to Feb. 1st.  Check out all the other blogs, Island Batik fabric collections, quilts and helpful hints from all the other 2017 Island Batik Ambassadors. It’s a month of inspiration to get 2018 off to an amazingly good start!

Don’t forget to leave me a comment and perhaps a title for the table runner I made with the Island Batik Elementz collection. I will randomly pick a winner from the people who leave comments and send you all the leftover fabric I have from this collection. It’s all been washed so it will be ready to cut and sew!

Week 1 – Winter

Week of January 8

• January 8 – Blue Moon – Inquiring Quilter, Cheryl Lynch
• January 9 – Mountain’s Majesty – FunThreads Designs, Little Bunny Quilts, Quilting Affection Designs
• January 10 – Alpine Ice – Freemotion by the River, Slice of Pi Quilts
• January 11 – Alpine Jingle – Purrfect Spots Designs, Bejeweled Quilts

Week 2 – Spring

Week of January 15

• January 15 – Elementz – Den syende himmel, Inspired Layers
• January 16 – Southern Blooms – Yellow Cat Quilt Designs, Quiltologist Treasures
• January 17 – Morning Sunshine – Quilt’n Party, Desert Bloom Quilting
• January 18 – Season’s Shades – Inchworm Fabrics, Kauffman Designs

Week 3 – Summer

Week of January 22

• January 22 – Paisley Dot – Pamela Quilts, Seams Like a Dream
• January 23 – Sunflower Serenade – Kathys Kwilts and More, Whispers of Yore
• January 24 – City Culture 2 – Mary Mack Made Mine, heARTs Creations,
• January 25 – The Quilt Rambler, Lizard Creek Quilts

Week 4 – Fall

Week of January 29

• January 29 – Autumn’s Grace – Beaquilter, KISSed Quilts
• January 30 – Pumpkin Patch – Ark Angel Creations, Seams to be Sew,
• January 31 – Plum Delicious – Masterpiece Quilting, Adventurous Applique and Quilting
• February 1 – Northern Woods – MooseStash Quilting, Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting

‘Thanks for reading to the end.  Island Batik has a give away at the end of the blog hop too!  Here is the link: Island Batik raffle entry .

 

Happy Inspiring Quilting!

Linda Ramrath