December is All Up To You

This months challenge for Island Batik is All Up To You! I love when I can be creative with fabric I love.

December is winter, cold, lots of holiday cheer and that all reminds me of snowflakes and cooler colors.

I wanted to use blues and purples, but also had to use the Almond Neutral as its my favorite fabric in the collections. This fabric I literally need to buy a ton of, as its a perfect low volume, subtle, beautiful and creates movement as well.

Just take a moment to appreciate this fabric. Island Batik can I have an entire bolt of this? I am joking, but honestly this fabric is perfect for soooo many projects I have in mind.

The dots have almost every color in them. Which allows this fabric to be used with almost any collection. I wanted to still with a winter, cold theme. In my mind I was thinking "Baby, its cold outside."

I saw the Milk Way quilt by Satomi Quilts and I knew that would be a perfect extra large block quilt. It gave off the snowflake vibe, as it had the four patch in the corners, around the star and then another diamond in each corner. It was perfect.

If you would like to purchase the pattern heres a link.

I pulled some of the blues, teals and purples from my left over fat quarters and half yard cuts. I think this year I have used more of these two collections than I thought I would, but honestly they are beautiful collections that just continue to call my name. I mean you can never go wrong with these soft bubbles and these edgier squares and zig zag style prints.

Bubbles, Curves and Corners

and

Morris Mist

I have my pattern, I have my fabric, now lets sew!

This was a great quilt that came together pretty quickly. I little bit of cutting, and little bit of sewing and some more cutting and some more sewing... Lots of ironing, which is made easy with my Oliso iron:

Lots of half square triangles which I pieced with my Aurifil thread. The 50wt Aurifil thread is my go to piecing thread.

Got a lot of the pieces done and was getting excited to start assembling the blocks.

I love that, because I made the blocks HUGE, it allows the fabric prints to shine! I love that you can really see the bubbles and curves, dots and zig zag designs.

I wanted to complete the diamonds that were around the edges. I then added on several more HST (half square triangles) in the lighter prints, along with the almond background fabric; around the boarders and it finally felt like the top was complete.

These softer fabrics are absolutely, chefs kiss. I just love the lighter prints as it helps keep this quilt feeling light, cold, winter and snowflake like.

Do you agree that the diamonds on the outer edge really completes the quilt?

I decided to dig through my random fabric in my stash and found a few linens that I ended up piecing huge 10 inch squares of the make up the back.

Once I had the back together, I then pulled out all my Hobbs batting to see which one I wanted to use. I did not have enough of the bleached batting so I just went with the cotton natural batting as that one will allow this quilt to be warm but not too warm.

I then sandwiched the quilt and I was ready to get some of this quilting done.

I decided to quilt the fabric with the Aurifil 2835 as it is a perfect light teal green thread that just melts into the fabric perfectly. While quilting, I did some echoing of the diamonds and made a chain style diamonds. I then did a little bit more free motion quilting in random areas around the quilt.

This quilt came together so well. I absolutely love this throw quilt and the fabric is just what I love. I can not even tell you how much I am enjoying this quilt as I type. I might even add a sleeve to hang it on the wall.

Lets see this quilt in action, shall we?

Thanks for checking out this Island Batik December challenge quilt. If you want to see more please check out all the other Island Batik Ambassadors quilts and projects linked below.

Alburl, Brenda: https://songbirddesigns.blog/

Atkinson, Renee: https://pinktulipquilting.wordpress.com

Best, Megan: www.bestquilter.com

Boatright, Pamela: www.Pamelaquilts.com

Deshensky, Susan: www.ladybluequilts.com

Fisher, Brittany: https://bobbinwithbrittany.com

Harris, Preeti: https://sewpreetiquilts.blogspot.com/

Hatziioannidi, Mania: www.maniaforquilts.com

Hauprich, Jane: www.stitchbystitchcustomquilting.com

Jamieson-Hirst, Kim: https://www.chatterboxquilts.com/

Johnson, Victoria: https://foreverquilting4you.wordpress.com

Kauffman, Connie: www.kauffmandesigns.blogspot.com