Tool Talk - My Day!

Table Runner by Connie Kauffman

21" x 39"

The September Island Batik Ambassador challenge was to use the ruler we received from Deb Tucker's Studio 180 and the bundle of new Spring 2022 fabrics from Island Batik that we received in our July boxes.

 

The ruler I received was the Corner Pop II.  This ruler is used for making cut corners with a 2:1 ratio.  What I really like about Deb Tucker Rulers is that each ruler makes so many different sizes.  This ruler makes 12 different sizes.  It also has left and right handed instructions.  There are also very helpful online instructional videos.

The Spring Island Batik Bundle I received is called Honeycomb designed by Kathy Engle for Jackie Kunkel Canton Village Quilt Works.  It's a lovely range of colors from orange and yellow to pink.  Island Batik also sent two coordinating fabrics that could be used with the bundle.

This project was a challenge for me for a couple reasons.  First was that the ruler didn't seem like it made a very interesting block.  It cuts off the corner of a block and there are a couple other things you can do, but it took awhile to get my imagination going.  The other challenge was the colors in the fabric bundle.  I love the colors yellow, orange and pink, but I rarely use orange and pink together in my designs.  I've seen others work with orange and pink and they turn out lovely!  Be sure and check out what Preeti Harris created with Honeycomb for her post today - it's lovely!

The Honeycomb bundle contained 20 fabrics.  That is a lot of fabrics to include in one quilt, so I took the liberty of pulling out the 7 pink and red fabrics.  They are lovely and I'll use them in a different project later.  That left me with a variety of 13 yellow and orangish fabrics.  Check out the great prints in this collection.

Now I was more excited and I worked on a pattern.  I decided to add Island Batik white solid and a teal fabric from the Island Batik Foundations that picked up some of the color in a couple of the fabrics.  I like how the teal brings out the other colors and adds a "pop" to the quilt.  One of my favorite fabrics in the collection is the one on the top left.  Notice how it incorporates the teal color.

For the outside border I cut white rectangles 5 1/2" x 2 1/2".  Using the Corner Pop II ruler  I cut off a corner of half of the blocks.  Then you can reverse the ruler and cut the reverse corner off the rest of the blocks.

Then I cut the orange and yellow triangles to fill out the blocks.  The instructions on the ruler are very clear on how to cut the corners and triangles.  One nice thing about using batiks is that you can use the triangles on either side as the coloring is the same on the front and the back.

I used the ruler on  most of the blocks for the center of the  table runner also.  Notice how in the center of each of the borders I actually used the ruler twice- once for the yellow/orange fabrics and once again for the small teal fabric.

I forgot to get a photo of pressing the blocks on the new pressing mat from Prairie Spirit Alpacas.  It is really great to press your blocks on!  We were supposed to make at least 30 of the new ruler blocks in the project.  I ended up making 52.

I used Hobbs Natural Cotton Batting and Aurifil 40 wt thread in orange 1133 and teal 1320.

The Westalee Rulers I used were the 8" arc, 6" arc, 4" arc. and the straight edge 12" x 3" ruler.  These rulers are great to use on a domestic machine.

I rarely use colored threads in quilting on white, but I like how this looked and it brought the color out into the borders.

Here is a photo of the runner after quilting with Schmetz microtex needles.  

I wasn't real happy with the runner at this point.  I thought it had too much white.

So- I trimmed some off!  Here is the finished runner with a button added in the center.  I like it much better.

Many thanks to Island Batik, Hobbs Batting, Schmetz Needles, Aurifil Thread, Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design and Prairie Spirit Alpacas for donating the product to make this project thru the Island Batik Ambassador Program.

Island Batik has a drawing this week for two beautiful fabric bundles -  Honeycomb and Cheers!

be sure to enter.

I have a drawing for 2 half yard pink fabrics from the Honeycomb Collection.  Leave a comment below telling me what you would name my table runner- I haven't named it yet!  I will pick a winner from Random.org at the end of the Blog Hop.  Entries from USA only due to postage.