August Island Batik Challenge

August was a great chance to do whatever pattern we liked for the Island Batik Challenge. I had received this beautiful layer cake of Ravishing Reds in my July shipment.

When my local guild had a sew-in day, we were tasked to bring in whatever fabrics to do a mystery challenge. What better way to get stuck in and use this beautiful collection?

I must say that mystery challenges make me a bit nervous but as I loved this collection, I figured surely I would love the quilt. When we arrived, everyone was given instructions to make a variation on a stack and whack style quilt. We were supposed to start with 14″ squares but as I had the layer cake, I figured I’d have more blocks, just a bit smaller. I put in a new Schmetz microtex needle and got to work. It took most of the day and I was very pleasantly surprised at the outcome!

You can’t really even see where the blocks start & stop. I wasn’t sure how many blocks it would make using the layer cake so I had added four extra Island Batiks. In the end, I realised that for each fabric you start with, you will have 1 block. So I had 44 blocks, finishing at 8″. I arranged them in a 6×7 layout, leaving me 2 blocks extra.

For my backing, I decided to use 2 yards of Conch, also part of the Ravishing Reds collection, and pieced a strip to include the extra 2 blocks. I didn’t have any more of the Conch but I had just enough of Tangerine, part of the Opulent Oranges collection. I really liked how the Tangerine set off the blocks and was a lovely complement to the Conch.

I quilted it with this lovely variegated 50wt thread from Aurifil, called Creme Brulee.I was surprised how well it blended over the reds as well as the yellow tones. I used a pantograph called Circle of Life by Patricia Ritter.

I used a Tuscany Collection Cotton/Wool blend by Hobbs

and it shows the quilting so nicely.

Not long after I started quilting, late one weekend evening of course, my stitch regulator when berserk and stopped functioning properly. My APQS Millennium was still working, just the stitch regulator was having an issue. It just meant that I had to quilt it using manual mode. I realised pretty quickly just how much I rely on that regulator to make nice stitches easily. 😀 I got into the groove pretty quickly so I was able to finish without a huge difference but I think I’ll be working on that more regularly in the future. It was an easy fix, in the end. I just needed to wait a bit to talk with the service department. 

I finished it off by binding with a Foundations Island Batik called Punch. Foundation fabrics can be purchased all the time so I think I’m definitely going to need some more of this one.

The quilt finished at 47.75″ x 55.5″ so it will make a nice little quilt to cuddle up with in front of the telly this autumn.

Many, many, thanks to Island Batik for all of these gorgeous fabrics, along with their industry partners, Aurifil, Hobbs Batting, and Schmetz for providing great products to work with.

Check out all of the other Ambassadors who have had some amazing projects this month, from quilts to jackets and everything in between.

I’ll be back in a few days with a fantastic blog hop and more beautiful Island Batik fabrics!

Happy Quilting!