Blog Hop, Island Batik 2023
Island Batik Blog Hop!
May
Woohoo! It’s Blog Hop Month with Island Batik and you don’t want to miss all of the beautiful fabrics and awesome tools being showcased this month!
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a Gadget Girl. That said, I’m not keen on one-trick ponies so when I get a gadget, it needs to be multi-purpose. This month we were challenged in two ways. We were tasked to use the beautiful Winter ’22 fabrics, a Surprise half-yard bundle that arrived in our first shipment, and a specialty ruler supplied by Deb Tucker’s Studio 180 Design. We could make any size and any design we wanted but we needed to have at least 30 blocks (of at least 2 sizes) made with the Studio 180 Design rulers.
Firstly, my Surprise bundle was a gorgeous collection by Kathy Engle called Holiday at Home. These beautiful fabrics come in a warm palette of lovely prints that just scream winter holiday to me with trees, snowflakes, swirls, and reindeer. They will be in stores very soon!
The ruler I was sent was called V-Block. The ruler will make 11 different sizes of those lovely, tall, star points units. Not only does it give you guidance on how wide to cut your strips, it is also a way to cut the different shapes, and a trimming guide too! It has instructions for both right & left handed users. While there is a bit of trimming needed, it’s not a lot, and makes creating these blocks so much easier. There are detailed instructions as well as great videos on Youtube for each of the rulers. This is the link to the video tutorial for the V Block ruler I received.
I had an idea when I first saw the ruler to make the 54-40 or Fight block, a block commonly used in the Tennessee Waltz design. I wanted to make a bed runner and I didn’t have a pattern so I opened up my EQ8 and set to creating a design. I was trying to figure out how to utilize multiple sizes of the V block and had seen other quilts with something in center of the snowball blocks. I chose the smallest size of the V block (1 inch!) and a 3″ finished unit.
I got started with the 4-patch blocks, quickly chain pieced.
Clipping those apart is easy with my little power flower:
I was able to chain piece the V block as well, adding one side at a time.
These smallest V block units are 1 inch. Teeny tiny! These are the untrimmed & trimmed unit. Much easier to trim down than sew tiny pieces. 🙂
These teeny units were much easier to manage under the needle when using a stiletto. This beauty was made my one of my fellow guild members. Those microtex needles supplied by Schmetz are awesome when piecing batiks and using Aurifil 50wt makes those seams super flat!
Once completed, I used Hobbs Cotton batting, kindly supplied in the shipment by Hobbs Batting.
Bound and lightly quilted, it’s ready to put on the end of my bed. It finished at 25″ x 60″.
To share the warm fuzzy feels, I will be giving away a stack of 5″ squares cut from all of these beautiful fabrics at the end of the blog hop. All you need to do is comment below (make sure I can contact you!) before the end of May to be entered into the random drawing. Easy peasy and I’ll ship worldwide! 🙂
AND… the generous folks at Island Batik fabrics will be giving away bundles of all of these new beautiful fabrics each week! This week’s giveaway will feature these two fabric lines:
To enter to win the fabric bundles and see all of the fabulous Island Batik fabrics that will be showcased this month with all of my fellow Ambassadors, click here.
As always, my deepest gratitude to Island Batik and their corporate sponsors, Aurifil, Deb Tucker’s Studio 180 Design, The Electric Quilt Company, Hobbs Batting, & Schmetz, for providing fantastic supplies to make beautiful things.
Happy Quilting!
Wow…that’s beautiful! What a great way to show those batiks off.
This runner is beautiful! Thanks for sharing your work and your process!
Lovely runner, and I adore those mini blocks! Beautifully done!
Your runner is sooo beautiful! These fabrics were perfect for it. I really love it.
Beautiful runner! Love the chain piecing!!!
Your runner is beautiful and the step by step pictures are very nice and easy to follow. Thanks for all the tips!
Great runner! Looks like a pretty nifty tool.
Your runner is very pretty! It looks like that ruler helps with very precise piecing.
Pretty bed runner, Elita.
Pretty bed runner, such tiny stars. I made a similar quilt years ago without the ruler you used, made my own templates.
Love your bed runner! Especially how the narrow triangles both form a star and anchor the arcs.