June Fly Away Challenge

                                                        Triangle Tango  26 1/2" x 26 1/2"

The June Island Batik Ambassador challenge is called Fly Away.  Why that title?  

The challenge was to make something using the flying geese block and one of the precut collections we received in the first Island Batik box.                   

Many thanks to Island Batik,  Hobbs Batting,  Aurifil Thread and Schmetz Needles for providing             products to make this project.

I love flying geese so I was excited to work on this project.  I usually make flying geese blocks by paper piecing as that makes very accurate blocks and I like to paper piece.

For fabric I decided I wanted to use the green and orange Island Batik gradation precut packages I got in the first Island Batik box this year.  The green collection is called Glorious Greens and mine came as a 10" Stack and the orange collection called Opulent Orange came in a 2 1/2" strip pack.   All 10 of the gradation collections come in Stacks (10" squares), Stamps (5" squares) and Strips (2 1/2" strips). I wanted to do something with colors going from light to dark in both greens and oranges.  I found the orange gradations to range from a pale yellow to coral to a dark orange. 

I selected  five green and five orange that had a nice gradation from light to dark.  I decided to use Island Batik's solid black fabric for the background to make the colors really pop.

I had fun playing around with possible design layouts and decided on using these two row patterns.

I needed to make 12 of the orange rows and 24 of the green.

I got busy with the green rows.

When I had the orange rows all done I added the black side triangles. I laid  the blocks out with the center square in a square blocks.  Adding the green rows will give the quilt even more movement.

I used black Aurifil thread for all the quilting.  Black thread on black fabric can be a challenge.  Hobbs Cotton batting worked well for  this table mat as it is soft and has nice drape.  I used Schmetz  Microtex needles which I use for almost everything.  I especially like the microtex as it is a thinner needle and doesn't make as large of a stitching hole.

I named the quilt Triangle Tango as the flying geese seem to be stepping out and about in a somewhat crazy pattern.  Probably not Tango steps, but certainly a dance of their own!