May- Make it Modern Island Batik Challenge

It's hard to believe it's the middle of May already.  I absolutely love Spring and have been enjoying the spring flowers, birds and all the fresh colors.  Here are a couple views from my windows in Northern Indiana.

To add to all the color explosion going on- it is time for the May Island Batik Ambassador challenge.  This month the challenge is Make it Modern with Hobbs. 

We were to incorporate one of the characteristics of modern quilts as defined by the Modern Quilt Guild- the use of bold colors and prints, high contrast and graphic areas of solid color, improvisational piecing, minimalism, and/or expansive negative space.

When I received my first Ambassador box this year I knew right away which fabrics I would use for this challenge- the Moroccan Bazaar Collection.  It is just bursting with color and I had fun pondering how I would use it for the challenge.  It also came with two coordinating fabrics.

I finally decided I wanted to do something with New York Beauty blocks to highlight the colors.

These grew into flowers with fusible appliqued leaves and stems.

Usually quilting is my least favorite part of a project, and all this background was going to need a lot of quilting!  I actually ended up having fun with the background quilting by using a variety of plastic templates from my stash and some wonderful Westalee quilting rulers.

Here are some close ups of the quilting done on my domestic machine.

And of course some beautiful Aurifil threads to quilt with.  The light  blue matched the background perfectly.

I tried Hobbs Silk batting for the first time and it quilted wonderfully.

Thanks to Island Batik, Aurifil and Hobbs for supplying the materials for this project thru the Island Batik Ambassador program.

One more time- my Eternity Garden Quilt