Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Wendy Sheppard - Winter Blues

Welcome to my stop on the "Creative New Quilts and Projects Blog Hop"! #creativenewquilts

Wendy Sheppard (#wendysheppard) has wowed quilty peeps for years with her beautiful designs and stunning quilting. If you don't follow her blog you've likely seen her designs in magazines. I've personally followed her blog, Ivory Spring, for several years and have appreciated her insights to the 'how' when she gives us her "Thread Talks". She is a domestic machine quilter, but many of her ideas can be used on a long-arm as well.

Maybe the fact that we both have degrees in engineering helps me relate to what she shares with us.

Listen to her brief interview with Pat Sloan about this book.
 

So, it feels like a personal honor for me to make one of her projects and be a part of this Island Batik blog hop featuring her new book.

When looking through the book, the first thing I appreciate about it as a shop owner, is that often my customers are looking to use some of the pre-cuts they have purchased or scraps from their own stash. This book has many options that are friendly to these scenarios.

When considering projects to make for the blog hop, I was immediately attracted to her 'Winter Blues' design (left) so was excited when I got the opportunity to make it!

My blog partner today, Freemotion by the River, chose to use a very different palette, but it was the simplicity and clean look of the blue and white that attracted me to the design. I chose fabrics from "Tinsel", a new Island Batik fabric line, currently shipping to shops. As you can see from this collection, it fits perfectly with the blue/grey/ white style of this quilt. I also added "Sprinkles" from Island Batik's Neutrals line for the white background.


Wendy's original used the same fabric for joiner/connecting pieces in both Block B and C as the square or rectangle portion of the block. In my own cutting I only paid attention to her notes that talked about the same fabric used in the C block and its connecting pieces. I chose to just proceed with what I had cut and continue with my piecing. In my initial selections from a 'stack' (10" squares) of fabrics to choose from, I did get a little picky and chose to use a fabric more than once just to keep the values (dark, medium or light) with sufficient contrast between the different blocks as specified in the design.

Consider how you cut if using a directional fabric, a lot of the cuts are rectangular, so it can make a difference. Once I had the pieces cut out, the piecing went quickly.

The next step was to lay out the blocks in rows and decide on their final placement. Wendy's illustration in the book provided a road map to make it simple. I would recommend you make a few extra of each block and connecting segments just to give yourself the opportunity to make it your own and play a little based on the coloring that you've chosen.

A great feature about Island Batik fabrics is that they are so well created it is often quite difficult to tell right from wrong side. That means some of the directional prints could go left or right....it is just the 90 degree cutting that you can't adjust so easily.

Batting: 80/20 and wool on top.

I do my quilting on a Gammill Optimum+ machine. It is all hand guided, but sometimes I use a pantograph and follow a laser light attached to the machine head and projected onto the drawn out design from the back of the machine. I had recently used this Dancing Snowflakes pantograph by Beany Girl Quilts (available at Willow Leaf Studio) in my March 4 finale post of our Planes, Trains and Automobile blog hop #PTABlogHop and decided that it was a perfect quick finish to this quilt.


Dancing Snowflakes panto with Warm & White batting.

I used The Warm Company, Warm & White batting available in my studio so that the quilting would lay fairly flat and the design of the quilt could stand on its own.

I used #Aurifil to piece and quilt (2024).


Although we've left WINTER behind .....I'll have it ready for next year! This would work great with a minkee or flannel back to add an extra cozy/soft feel. I just got into my studio some beautiful blue minkee that would work great.




Winter Blues - Island Batik "Tinsel" version
Buy the book here from Landauer Publishing or get it NOW as a PDF download. If you'd rather get a signed copy from Wendy use her email to contact her directly.

Do you have a local quilt shop to buy Island Batik fabric? Interested in a free copy of the book? Leave me a comment below on who your LQS with IB fabric is.....and use the Rafflecopter to register your email address. I wouldn't mind if you chose to follow my blog, visit my Facebook page and follow-along in a 'view first' way or signup for my newsletter. All of these optional ways to enter, will get you an entry to a random selection for a free copy of the book (US mailing address required) thanks to Landauer Publishing.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


If you don't have a local shop, but would like an opportunity to own some beautiful Island Batik fabrics, I have some available for purchase.

Shaved Ice Stack (10" squares great for this quilt! just add white and grey yardage)  $41
I also have Sweet Georgia Peach and French Roasted Stacks.











Also...kits or yardage for Woven Braid in two colorways (original and green/brown),
 
 
 
 A great grouping to work for "In Memory" and "Camouflage Canopy" from my Dangling Diamonds 'bonus' patterns using the Quilted in Honor fabrics.


And nature inspired motifs if you're working on a National Park inspired quilt in honor of this year's National Park Service Centennial. Don't forget, we're hosting the National Park Centennial quilt exhibit July 1-4, 2016 in Coulee Dam, WA. Don't miss it!

  
If any of these are of interest, just let me know "interested in your IB fabric" as part of your comment below and I'll get in touch with better details of what the fabrics are, pricing, etc. Still working on a proper shopping cart, but thank you for being interested.
 

Thanks for stopping by!
Here is the entire blog hop schedule:
Monday, March 14 – Island Batik Intro
Tuesday, March 15 – Adele Mogavero - Del-Lillian's
Wednesday, March 16 – Pamela Quilts 
Thursday, March 17 – MooseStash Quilting
Friday, March 18 –  Bejeweled Quilts
Monday, March 21 –  One Quilting Circle
Tuesday, March 22 –  BeaQuilter
Wednesday, March 23 – Freemotion by the River and Kissed Quilts  (you're here!)
Thursday, March 24 – Mary Mack Made Mine
Friday, March 25 – Lemon Tree Snippets

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Worldwide Quilting Day

What are you doing to celebrate Worldwide Quilting Day?

Tonight I'm working on Wendy Sheppard's inspired "Winter Blues" quilt in a new collection of Island Batik fabrics--we're close to finishing the season of 'Winter' here in the northern hemisphere, so no time like the present!










Come back  Wednesday, March 23, to see the finished result. Happy Quilting !!


 

Friday, March 4, 2016

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   



Thursday, March 3, 2016

Island Batik - Fire Island


We're putt...putting...along ...on our #PTABlogHop. Hope you're enjoying the virtual travels we've been on. Fire Island is our featured collection today. These cute cars were cut with my Accuquilt die cutter from the beautiful Fire Island Fabrics. Today we're headed to somewhere that you need a boat or a plane to get there, but then you can drive around on the ISLAND!


The quilt I'm featuring in today's post, you might have seen during the Blogger's Quilt Festival or in person at AQS Phoenix where it humbly hung in an award winning group of quilts. I felt honored that it was juried in, but is more of a utility quilt than a show quilt. None the less, I hope you can see from the close up shots below that the quilting gives it a special 'fire and ice' feeling.




This design was released at Fall Market 2015 in the Island Batik booth, featuring their Fire Island fabric line that will be shipping soon.

Patterns are now available ...ask your local shop to order them or contact me directly if you'd like one.

The pattern is called "Jewels" and this quilt has been named "Fire Island Jewels".

I loved working with the vibrant colors against the white and black. I kept imagining a hot lava flow in the Hawaiian islands.


 Imagining the various shades of blue water.


Now to quilt it..... The border is a large flame like shape and this is repeated in various sizes around the jewels in the center of the quilt. If you just used blue and red jewels--it could easily be a Quilt of Valor!






















Backside


So, this version of Jewels, Fire Island Jewels.



 Here are some other color versions made by my 'testers':

made by Julie Tapley, Quilted by Holly Anderson
a Patriotic theme
made by Nancy Cargo; Quilted by me
using Jinny Beyer batiks and border print --these fabrics available now in my studio (just ask!)

Here is a detailed shot of what I'm currently quilting. This is in progress and will have much more quilting added, but fun to show you where I'm at today. Watch my Facebook page for progress shots. This is another 'Jewels' version using Jinny Beyer Malim and Malim II Batiks and one of her Milan prints used in the border. I do have these fabrics available now in my shop and can ship. I'm using an 80/20 batting on the bottom and a layer of wool on top.



My original "Royal Peacock Jewels" was a special commission for a wedding gift in 2010. I used a variety of specially selected colors for the center blocks and a Jinny Beyer border print symmetrically mitered (it worked out I had the right repeat ratios between the width and the height so didn't have to cut the sides in two pieces to get it to stay symmetrical. I also left the two sized borders together instead of cutting them apart and adding a separate 2nd border. It just happened to work out beautifully. The quilting included peacock feathers in the jewels. Their wedding had a peacock theme. I always wanted to make this into a pattern ...and the time has finally come!
 
Do you see white stars?  -this turned out to be a feature that helped my client decide on this particular design as the chosen one for me to make.
 
How about a giveaway?? I've got fat eights of these fabrics that were the same ones used in the jewels. I'll include my new "Jewels" pattern as well, you'll just need to add the black, white and border fabrics. There is a small piece of border included in this giveaway, but not enough to border the quilt. Regardless, you may find some other project to make and be able to include it. It adds some great drama!






How to enter -- I realize through the Island Batik giveaway you get an entry from visiting my Facebook page. Follow it with a 'See First In Your Newsfeed' selection so you don't miss a post.

I'd love for you to follow my Pinterest page if you're interested in seeing my designs. I've just started putting them up on the page and it will continue to grow as I add some of my prior designs and continue to add more.
Visit Marlene's profile on Pinterest.
  
I'd love for you to subscribe to my newsletter that comes out about the first of every month. Check out my website and click on the 'Signup' button.

I don't use my twitter much, but would be so pleased if you'd follow along. @KISSedQuilts

Even consider 'following' my blog (see sidebar). It is mostly used to show finishes and  gives me an opportunity to describe how they come together. I also use it to share these beautiful Island Batik fabrics. This year as an Island Batik Ambassador I predict you'll see more from us!

Bottom line -- TO ENTER the GIVEAWAY use the Rafflecopter widget for entry options. Thanks!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I'll be back tomorrow for a final post that will take you on some Holiday Travel!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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- You're here!! Thanks for stopping by!
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

TODAY -- Thursday, March 3 – Fire Island
KISSed Quilts You're here!

Friday, March 4 – Tinsel, Holiday Happenings
Purrfect Spots Designs
KISSed Quilts- I'll be back to wrap it up with a Heartfelt Holiday Trip!
Moose Stash Quilting  

Thanks for stopping by! I try to respond to each comment when an email is included.