Our Island Batik Ambassadors challenge for the month of September is called “StarStruck”. It may as well have been called “Star-crossed” the way my year has been going. You see, I had a great pattern to show you. It’s a quilt I designed for Quilty magazine, and it was going to be in the Sept/Oct issue. Then Quilty folded.
Fortunately, the editors tell me my quilt will be published in Easy Quilts, but not until next autumn. Unfortunately, I can’t show it to you until then. About halfway through September, it occurred to me that I had planned to use that quilt for my StarStruck challenge. The scramble was on for a Plan “B”.
Several years ago, I published a book called The Thrifty Quilter: Make (Nearly) Free Quilts from Leftover Fabric. The book describes my system for pre-cutting and using fabric scraps. From time to time on this blog, I offer “TQable” block and quilt patterns, meaning those that can be made from one or more of the precuts in the Thrifty Quilter system. This little quilt is totally TQable.
To make this 42″ x 54″ quilt, I chose a Fat Eighths collection from Island Batik’s “Mountains Majesty” collection, and 3/4 yard of a light off-white. I am just a little in love with that blue and green snowflake piece, and deeply fond of several others.
To make the Guiding Star quilt, you will need:
59 6.5″ assorted medium and dark print squares
4 sets of four 3.5″ medium and dark print squares
8 3.5″ x 6.5″ off-white rectangles
6 2.5″ x Width of Fabric strips for binding
Step one is to make eight 3.5″ x 6.5″ Flying Geese units with the “Stitch and Flip” method. If you’ve never done this, I explain it in this blog post. In the post, I drew diagonal lines on my squares, but nowadays I just use my little ruler and cut that corner off before stitching. To be honest, it may save me all of 30seconds per unit, so so if marking that line helps your accuracy, keep on marking.
Then, sew pairs of Geese into a 6.5″ star point unit. This detail shot shows the four 6.5″ x 6.5″ star point units sewn into the quilt.
Once the star point squares, lay out the quilt in a grid, seven squares across and nine squares down. You can place your star anywhere in this grid. Rearrange squares as needed until you have a balance that is pleasing to you.
Now you are ready to sew the squares into rows. Once I have the squares laid out as I want them, I like to pin small tags to the upper left corner of each square telling me which row that square is in, and which place in the row. This way, if the layout is disturbed, I know exactly where each piece goes when I lay it out again.
I remove the tags as I sew the squares together. The first block in each row keeps its tag until the rows are sewn together.
Once your quilt top is sewn together, layer it with your batting and backing, quilt as desired and use the off-white strips to bind it.
Guiding Star was quilted by Kathy Brown at the Creative Needle in Shelby, MT.
All fabrics were provided by Island Batik. Batting provided by Hobbs, and the thread is Aurifil 50weight cotton thread.
To see what my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors have been up to, check their blogs:
To make a 4 by 4-Patch block, you will need:
First, sew the medium print squares into 4-Patches and sew the 4-Patches into a Double 4-Patch.
make four flying geese, using the Stitch-and-Flip method.
Sew a light square to both sides of two of the geese. Sew these to the sides of your double 4-patch.
The 
The March challenge for the 2018 Island Batik Ambassadors was to try a new Technique. Most of us are longtime quilters, instructors and/or designers, so for many of us, the hardest part of the challenge was to come up with a tool or technique we haven’t already tried! Fortunately, I had a couple of tools designed by 
We began with the fabric pull. I started with the collection of basics supplied by Island Batik. I chose a dark green for my big pieced star. I also decided that I had to use this yellow and magenta blend because…well, to be honest, since I had little confidence this project was going to turn out, I wouldn’t be too upset if, in the end, I felt like I had wasted it. Then I pulled out my bag of Island Batik 
scraps and came up with more greens and pinks, and decided to add a copper-brown print from the basics.
First came the pieced base. I made one large dark green star with the Gem 10 tool. The instructions that come with the tool are well-illustrated. In a nutshell, you sew stripsets, then use the tool as a template to cut wedges. There are five wedges with the darker green, and five mirror-image wedges with the slightly lighter green. Two wedges make one star point wedge.
At this point, Muse left the studio. I hate it when he does that.
Making the applique stars with the Gem Star tool was the most enjoyable part of this project. There’s a clever little trick for getting those points so pointy, and the only difficult part of the whole process is getting the center to match up. Most were oh-so-close, but this gold one is dead-on perfect.
Quilting is very simple on this piece. I stitched 1/4″ inside and outside the perimeter of the large pieced star, then echo-quilted straight lines in the gold background, and straight lines across the magenta corners.
This is proving to be a bigger challenge for some of us than for others. Personally, I consider my project, The Highland 9-Patch, a “splendid failure.”
I did begin with a 9-Patch. Mine has an 8″ square of navy blue in the center, 9″ squares of a bright green in the corners, and the side “squares” are actually 8″ x 9″.
Next, I sliced the block vertically 2.5″ outside the center seam on both sides of the center squares…
Then I did the same thing, slicing and splicing in 1″ horizontal strips.
Actually, this post is on time. It’s still May, and this month’s 
To make the Time Shift pattern, I started with four 4.5″ squares each of blue, green and cream Island Batik fabrics.
Cut each square diagonally twice, to make four triangles from each square.
Lay the Tucker Trimmer on your square, with the solid diagonal line along the SW-NE seam line. I’m cutting 3.5″ QSTs, so you’ll notice I have the dashed diagonal line labeled “3-1/2″ lined up with the NW-SE seam line.
Now rotate the QST, and lay the tool down again, aligning the same diagonal lines with your seam lines.
You now have a perfect 3.5″ QST, with no dogears to trim later!
Lay your QSTs out as shown. Sew into three rows, then sew the rows together into a block.
For the back, I cut two 12″ x 16.5″ rectangles of the cream fabric. I hemmed on long edge of each rectangle, the pinned them wrong-sides-together, to the pillow top, so that the hemmed edged overlapped. I sewed all the way around the perimeter of the top, then trimmed the corners and turned it right-side out and stuffed the pillow form inside.
In the case of this 45″x 54″ quilt/wallhanging I designed for Island Batik’s “Looking Back” challenge, the title is sadly ironic.
For the last week of her earthly life, I slept in a recliner next to Mom’s bed at Peace Hospice in Great Falls. One night I dreamt of her passing from this world into the next, and into the welcoming arms of my grandparents and a host of friends and family members who have gone before.
“Mini Love” is the theme for my second project as an ambassador for Island Batiks Fabric. For this project, I wanted to make a mini quilt, which is usually defined for competition purposes, as a scale model version of a full-size quilt pattern, usually a scale of 1/4″ = 1″. That means a miniature version of a 12″ traditional quilt block would be just 3″ square.
For my mini quilt, I chose a version of the Ohio Star, and chose to celebrate the Irish portion of my DNA by using greens and oranges from the “Stash Builder” collection of 5″ strips that was included in the lovely box of fabrics that Island Batiks sent me. I’m using Aurifil 50-wt thread, courtesy of the company, and Heirloom batting provided by Hobbs.
I have a friend who likes to count the number of pieces in a block, and she would be quick to point out that there are 29 pieces in each of these mini Ohio Star blocks. I prefer to think in terms of units. Each block has four quarter-square triangles, and four half-square triangle units with a little accent corner. Plus, of course, the center square. It seems not quite so intimidating. Still- that’s a lot of pieces.
There are nine blocks in this quilt. When I have blocks with those accent corners, I will usually carry that out into the border. To do this for this mini quilt, I cut sixteen 3.5″ squares. I added orange on two corners of twelve of the squares, and one orange corner on the remaining four.
It took me a while to decide how to quilt this little gem. I decided to trace around the octagons in each block, and crosshatch the border, using the star tips as my starting points. To keep my lines straight, I used a square ruler, with the diagonal line placed along the border seam, drew a very (very) light line with a #4 drafting pencil.
You learn something new everyday.
Setting aside the larger triangles, I sewed six of each of these pieced units.
Then, those three units are stitched to the multicolored triangles to make six matching triangle segments.
Now you can sew the segments together. Sew two half-hexagons, with three segments in each one, then sew the halves together to complete your hexagon. At this point, it measures 8.5″ top to bottom.
I quilted 1/8th inch around the outside of the lighter pink center star, and the larger multi-color star, then inside the beige and green diamonds on the outer edge of the mat. I also decided to go back and quilt inside the center star.
I used a 2″ folded binding in the beige and green print to finish my Galentine’s Day mug rug.
