July Island Batik Ambassador project

Hi friends!

This month for the Island Batik Ambassador challenge we were asked to make a baby quilt. Fun! I love making baby quilts!

 

Not just because they are small and therefore we can make them quickly but because they are usually meant for a baby! A little bundle of joy. 

Our kids are always our bundles of joy, aren’t they? I am traveling later this week to the east coast and I will get to see my first little bundle of joy- my son Sean- and his wife Rea. I am so excited to see them and spend the weekend with them.

Later in my trip I will get to see my last little bundle of joy- my daughter Alyssa, and her hubby Jeff. Super excited to get to see 2 of my 3 bundles of joy; I wish could get to see my middle son as well but he does not live close to the other 2 ( as in a plane ride away) and already has plans. 🙁

For this challenge I decided to use these cute little roll up bundles of Island Batik fabric and some lovely fabric for the background.

 

I picked one of my new patterns, Saybrook Signals.

 

Saybrook Signals is a fun, fast pattern that uses different size squares for different size quilts. The baby quilt was designed for those cute little 2 ½” mini charm packs but I knew I could just cut my rolls into squares.

I had 2 rolls, each with 4 strips 5″ x WOF. So I planned to pick 2 strips to be the centers of each block and then pick 3 strips to use with each center square. So I was planning to make 6 different blocks.

It took a little while to decide which fabric was going where. I knew the orange fabric was going to be one of the centers but picking the second one was a little harder. I thought maybe the dark purple, or the bright green… When I couldn’t decide, I took a black and white photo to see how they looked from the the “value” perspective and that really helped me to pick the best plan.  Sometimes the color can throw you off but when you take a black and white, you can really see the value of each fabric compared to the others. This is the shot of the final plan.

 

The light aqua and the orange for the centers and the rest as the surrounding pieces.

 

Once I had blocks, then I played around trying to decide how to put the blocks into the rows…  

 

… added the sashing and voila! A totally cute baby quilt!

 

I quilted the whole thing (and I quilted it myself!) with wavy lines across the quilt using some fun variegated Aurifil thread.

 

I really like using my walking foot to quilt. And having programmed stitches to pick from also makes it pretty easy to do!

 

The binding was this bright blue and green. Love it! Just so happy.

 

For those of you who like the pattern Saybrook Signals, for the rest of this month you can get it for $2 off. Use the code baby!

Ends Monday night July 31th at 12midnight (my time zone).

 

Did you see on Instagram what I made with the leftovers from the this project? Pincushions! It was so fun! I made 1 (or 2) a day for 5 days. A little mini pincushion challenge.

 

and, last but not least….

 

happy quilting!

Kate

 

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