October’s Challenge for Island batik is Borders and bindings and guess what!? I was looking thru all my old Island Batik posts and I haven’t done anything creative with borders or bindings before with Island batik quilts!
As you know I love Accuquilt too and I had originally planned this for just a “because” quilt, but you’ll see how my plan changed at the end!
in July I did an EQ tutorial on circles –
BECAUSE I just got this BIG Go circle die from Accuquilt (4,6,7,8”)
I looked at my bright scraps of batiks (I have quite a lot, since I’ve been an ambassador for 3 years!)
I picked a yellow and cut out a 4” circle (after I added heat n bond to the back)
I centered it on a yard of white batik (which I later trimmed to 27 1/2”)
then I cut (4) 3” circles with my 2,3,5” circle die
and I ironed them down diagonally
then added (4) 2 1/2” circles (from another circle die)
and then I added (4) blue 4” circles and marked it a bit different
and added (12) small 1 1/2” circles around the blue, kind of like a paw print
and then I added more circles in turquoise and another light green
This is when I decided to trim it down and added a thick brown border
I showed it to my husband and my initial idea was to raw edge and just quilt on top of them, and he like that idea but once the top was done I wanted to do something more custom
so I started marking it
Then because that’s more traditional I couldn’t leave it raw edge, so I got out my threads and found matches and button hole stitched around each circle!
Then I started quilting it!
So I could have kept this for December’s “scrappy” theme but then read that it’s supposed to be table toppers, SO… that’s when I decided to squeeze it in for this month’s theme and I pulled out the same batiks I used for the circles and cut random lengths of 2 1/2” strips, which was easy as they were left over scraps, some were FQs, some were yardage that had chunks cut out, the pink/purple was a 10” square!
As I made the binding I wanted to make sure that it would look good and that I wouldn’t have seams on the corners, so my trick is to pin it near the beginning and then lay out the binding all the way around the circumference of the quilt, and if a seam ends up on a corner, I move the beginning of the binding strip and pin again and do it again.
here the first time I laid it out, it wasn’t right
so I moved the beginning and here it’s much better
Here’s the quilt all done!
the quilting has grids, feathers and pebbling
I even changed the color of the thread for the outer border feathers!
here’s the back
I’ve always wanted to do a whole cloth quilt and this sort of gave me the practice with that! I’m very happy with how it turned out
Bea,it is beautiful and very modern. I love how you made it look very easy
You're incredible, Bea. I'm so glad to read this whole story of this quilt. So interesting to follow the progress from the beginning. Thank you, Bea.
Yeah!!!
Gorgeous quilting and quilt Bea!
Look at you getting all adventurous with the quilting-very fun! Great scrappiness in that binding.
Beautiful!!
Your quilt is STUNNING! So fresh and new in its design. Creative Quilting Bliss…<3
Gorgeous!
Lovely quilting and you can't beat a scrappy binding! Fun quilt!
Beautiful quilt Bea and I have been having fun with that die from AccuQuilt also!
Very fun! Your quilting designs add so much to this quilt! Love a scrappy binding.
Bea this turned out fantastic. I'm still working on mine
I am envious of your quilting…looks fantastic!!! The early bird catches the worm.
Truly beautiful quilt. Love your overall design and when combined with your stunning free-motion quilting, along with beautiful batiks, this quilt looks stunning. Absolutely stunning. QuiltShopGalwww.quiltshopgal.com
Hey Bea,Love how this turn out. It is very inspiring.Tea
I like how it turned out too.
Wow that turned out awesome and your quilting finished it off. I like the way you did the binding too.