Island Batik - Holiday Happenings

Here we are on the last day of our Planes, Trains and Automobile Blog Hop featuring the new fabric collections from Island Batik. #islandbatik #PTABlogHop 
Wow...what a great 3 weeks it has been. Lots of giveaway opportunities and inspiration!

Today I'm featuring fabrics from Holiday Happenings.







and a few from










Last fall, Heidi Kory from Electric Quilt, (#EQ25) shared this free pattern -- Heartfelt Holiday. Since I love heart shapes so much, perhaps that is why I fell in love with this quilt. It also reminded me of something from my childhood.

When we think 'end of the year' travel, we often think of holiday travel. If you're going on an extended vacation at Christmas time, why not take your Christmas tree with you?

When in the Philippines at the age of 13, my mother acquired a woven green tree with red balls on it. She hung it in our dining room year round. A photo from a significant event in your life was hung on it with honor. Graduation or Marriage for each of my cousins got their photo on the tree as well.

So, these two thoughts came together for me to use the beautiful Holiday Happenings fabrics for the tree and some Lavish fabrics for the presents along the base. In the tree, I did add a red from  Sea Salt Sandy.  I couldn't help but get a bit creative with the border and came up with something new. I haven't seen this anywhere on a quilt, so I will share a little tutorial on how to make it happen.

My grandfather's photo albums included one with older black paper pages and photo corner holders. This concept inspired the border design.



The 'golden' photo holders are using fabric from Countryside (111510121).

Whatever width you want your 'border' to be --in this case the white border which then looks like an old style photo edge, the holder is the equivalent of a half square triangle on each outer edge, a square, and then a corner square. Since I was scrounging from leftovers of another project, I had to be creative. Sometimes I was able to cut a trapezoid and do a mitered corner, otherwise I was doing HSTs and squares or parts of both. Since the blocks in this design have a finished 8" (height) x 5" (width), I decided the inner border should be 2" and the outer border 3". This also allowed me to have enough of the 'golden' fabric for the corners!


A large variety of threads were used. Not much of any, but having the ability to use the variety gives me lots of options. Checking tension and knowing how to go to almost no tension for the metallic threads is important.

I chose to use two battings. 80/20 on the bottom and a wool on top.

The quilting in the photo corners is just an echo on the inside, using the A&E Tex 30 Fox. If you look at a real one, that is how they are embossed. The white paper edge is a free style cross hatch intentionally 'squiggled' to give it kind of a linen look. So Fine! 401 thread.


The quilting on the presents is fairly simple and used the motif of the 'wrapping' for a quilting design and stitch-in-the-ditch the ribbon. Signature - Berry Wine, A&E Tex 40 - Yale Blue and YLI Variegated Kyoto Garden were all used. I did use a couple of fabrics from "Meadow" collection for the first and fourth present ribbons and one from "Countryside" for the ribbon on the very last present as well.






The hearts on the tree have a feathered border around a smaller inner heart. I used a #Wonderfil metallic thread in the hearts.

The tree quilting is just long spikes to look like tree boughs to fill the space. YLI Forest.

The star quilting is just a simple inner echo of the outer edge with a gold Madeira metallic thread.

The tree trunk has a wood grain effect in the quilting, YLI Old Penny thread. I used a Sea Salt Sandy fabric for the trunk.

Now for a little information about the pieced background. The light blue is a Galaxy Batik.

The quilting is a pantograph --Dancing Snowflakes (Willow Leaf Studio)--am I crazy? I just felt it was the right thing and so used this as a test (I did it again on the next customer quilt!) and at each pass I would mark out the tree or whatever the obstacle was and carefully stop and start and run around to the front to move to the next area by ditching along the tree or present. I hand guide all of my stitching, so this seemed pretty crazy, but I'm quite pleased with the result. So grateful for the sunshine today so I could get this photo!

 The black border is stitched with Omni Black and I used the motif of the fabric to do the quilting.

 A word of thanks to the entire Island Batik team for engaging us Ambassadors and providing these wonderful fabrics.

Thank you for following along. I hope that if you are a blessed winner of any of the giveaways, you will enjoy using them in a special treasure.








I've got 10 Fat Eighths from this collection to share, so leave me a comment ----do you like to design your own quilts or use someone's pattern? Do you use EQ? Be sure to get your email into the rafflecopter. Just today to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here is the Island Batik Giveaway .....one last day to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Here is the complete listing of the blog hop if you've just joined us and would love to catch all the inspiration. Happy Quilting! See you again later this month (I'll be posting on March 23 using the Tinsel line of fabric!)

Did you miss these posts?
Here’s the blog hop schedule:
Monday, February 15 – Caribbean Splash
Bejeweled Quilts
Pamela Quilts
Tuesday, February 16 – London Fog
Moose Stash Quilting
Wednesday, February 17 -- French Roasted
Made In Scraps
Happy Cottage Quilter
KISSed Quilts --did you see my airplane theme here?
Freemotion by the River (Bonus!)
Thursday, February 18 – Crystal Cove
Freemotion by the River
Friday, February 19 – Florida Oranges
Fun Threads Designs
Kauffman Designs
Tamarinis
Monday, February 22 – Coral Reef
Mary Mack Made Mine
Purrfect Spots Designs
Tuesday, February 23 -- Sweet Georgia Peach
KISSed Quilts --yep, me! ...and my own set of giveaways!
One Quilting Circle
Wednesday, February 24 – Hollywood Hills
The Fit Quilter
Maria Michaels Designs
Thursday, February 25 – Desert Rose
For Quilts Sake
Lemon Tree Snippets --did you see what she did with my Dangling Diamonds design?
Freemotion by the River -- a bonus post!
Friday, February 26 – Sea Salt Sandy
Bejeweled Quilts
KISSed Quilts
Moose Stash Quilting
Pamela Quilts
Tamarinis
Mary Mack Designs - BONUS!!!
Monday, February 29 – Jersey Shore
Beaquilter
Lemon Tree Snippets
BONUS - Freemotion by the River
Tuesday, March 1 – Tuscany Sun
Tammy Silvers
BONUS - Freemotion by the River
Wednesday, March 2 – Lavish
Freemotion by the River
Moose Stash Quilting
Thursday, March 3 – Fire Island
KISSed Quilts
Friday, March 4 – Tinsel, Holiday Happenings
Purrfect Spots Designs
KISSed Quilts- You're here!
Moose Stash Quilting