Falling Leaves

Falling Leaves

Photo by Mellisa Karlin Mahoney
Courtesy of Quilter's Newsletter 

This is my quilt Falling Leaves.  It has just been published in the June/July issue of Quilter's Newsletter.  

The fabrics are Island Batik fabrics from the Green Acres collection and  Neutrals.  These colors are very deep rich shades and wonderful to work with. 

This quilt was fun to make, but it is a bit challenging with things like fusible applique, partial seams, diagonal settings, etc.

Quilter's Newsletter has made kits available - if you are interested you can shop online at:  quiltandsewshop.com

Playing with leftovers

I'm sure a lot of you have had piles of leftover scraps after making a quilt project.  It seems like I always do.  The little individual pieces I usually add to my scrap drawers, but this time I was left with a lot of 1" strips of the same fabric line (French Roasted by Island Batik).  They were from a couple projects that will be in a future book by Annies (yet to be released).  Anyway- these strips were so lovely and so small- what to do with them?  I didn't want to just put them away with my scraps.

I wish I had taken a picture off all the strips before I worked with them, but I just jumped right in and forgot all about photos.  I decided to sew the strips together into various rows of four.  Then I cut those into 1" strips and sewed them into squares  of 4 rows.  So each block has 16 squares.

I had enough other fabric to add the squares and border strips.
Here is the little runner.

You can't tell from the photo, but the pieced squares measure 2" x 2" (1/2" squares inside).  The whole runner is 26" x 11".

Play with your scraps - you can make a whole new project!

Playful Paper Piecing

This month the Island Batik Ambassadors are all working on Paper Piecing projects.  I happen to love paper piecing and have several books out with paper piecing patterns.  The theme for the Island Batik projects was Playful Paper Piecing.  I thought about the word Playful, and decided to go with a pattern from my book 24 Kids Quilt Blocks (available at: e pattern central

I decided to make the block design for flip flops.  Doesn't that sound like summer fun!

I used three fabrics from the Island Batik Lavish collection.  They are so colorful and fun to work with.

Here are my flip flops made into a cute little hot pad.

The flowers are silk flowers attached with a single button.  It gives a cute 3-D effect.

Paper piecing is really fun - give it a try!