ISLAND BATIK AMBASSADOR MARCH CHALLENGE

Island Batik supplied me with the fabric for this project and Hobbs supplied the batting. This blog contains affiliate links that I may receive compensation for when used.

The first month of my responsibility as an Island Batik Ambassador is under my belt! I realized that the reason they are called challenges is because they are asking us to stretch our skills and imagination and create things that we would not normally create.

First I want to announce the winner of my last Island Batik challenge. Her label is VWoman87. She did not leave me her email so I am unable to contact her. If she is reading this blog, please fill out my contact form with your address and email. If she does not respond, then I will choose a different name. This is why I STRESS that you need to leave me some way to contact you in your comment so you don't lose out on winning a prize!

March's challenge is to do something that we have never done before. I have to admit after crafting for over 50 years and quilting for over 30 there are very few things that I have not tried! When I started quilting in 1985 I wanted to learn everything there was about quilting. That included, traditional piecing, paper piecing, foundation piecing (sometimes the two are interchangeable), English paper piecing, machine appliqué. hand appliqué including needle turn, rouching, raw edge appliqué, curved piecing, hand piecing, machine quilting, hand quilting, seminole piecing, and freezer paper appliqué. Not sure if I left anything out, but the point is I had a lot of difficulty finding something I have not done or tried!

Wracking my brain, I finally realized that I have never made a Dresden Plate quilt! Aha!!!! I have to admit I had to look on the internet on how to make a Dresden plate block and found quite a few videos and blogs that showed a couple different ways to make one. I went to my computer and my EQ8 program, found the block and decided on a layout and size. I then printed out the templates and made them with heavy template plastic. 

So now that I figured out what to do, I had to pick my fabrics. Normally I don't have any problems picking fabrics when I am doing a quilt because I always start with a focus piece and pick colors from that. This time I had to pick a color way that I wanted to do this quilt in and had to use the fabrics that I was given. I didn't realize how hard that would be. I'd put 2 or 3 fabrics together and then look for others and I didn't like all of them together, so I would pick another 2 or 3 fabrics and again, not happy with the results. What I decided was I was trying too hard to find matching fabrics. I had to just make a decision and live with it. So here are the fabrics I chose with the blades cut out. Not my normal color palate.

Then I had to make the pointy ends of the blades. That was a piece of cake! All I had to do was fold the blade in half lengthwise right sides together and sew a 1/4" seam across the wide end. I did realize that in order for it to remain sewn together I had to use a shorter stitch (with a 2.4 being average, I used a 1.9).

I decided to trim where it will turn so that there is very little bulk at the corner tip.

Fold the tip down matching the center of the seam to the center crease and finger pressed it.

Turn it inside out, using my stylus to poke the corner out, and to get the point sharp, again lining up the center seam on the center crease and pressed it with my iron.

Here it what it looks like from the front.

Now sew the sections together. To get the tops to match perfectly I made sure that when I put them right sides together, I can not see any of the bottom petal peeking outside of the top petal.

Press seams open.

                                               Sew the remaining petals together to equal 6. Make 8 like sections. (The remaining four will be used in the corners of the quilt.)

Sew quarters together, then halves.

The completed petals.

View of the back.

Baste the center at 1/8" with a longer stitch.

Now it is ready to attach to a larger square. Be sure to read my blog next week, where I will show how I chose threads, the stitches I used to attach it to the background fabric, what kind of layout I used, and how I quilted it. I will have another drawing then so be sure to come back.

As always; do what you love and love what you do. Feel free to share my blog and leave a comment if you like. Thank you for reading. Toby

Want to follow other Island Batik Ambassadors? Use the links below.

Alison at Little Bunny Quilts

Amy at Sew Incredibly Crazy

Anita at Quilt in a not-Shell

Anna at Ark Angel Creations

Anne at Sweetgrass Designs

Barbara at Bejeweled Quilts

Bea at BeaQuilter

Carole at Carole Lyles Shaw

Connie at Freemotion by the River

Connie at Kauffman Designs

Dione at Clever Chameleon

Geraldine at Living Water Quilter

Jackie at If These Threads Could Talk

Janet at Whispers of Yore

Jeanette at Inchworm Fabrics

Jen at Patterns by Jen

Jennifer at Curlicue Creations

Jennifer at Dizzy Quilter

Jennifer at Inquiring Quilter

Jessica at Desert Bloom Quilting

Joan at Moosestash Quilting

Joyce at heARTs Creations

Karen at Sew Karen-ly Created

Karen at The Quilt Rambler

Kathleen at Kathleen McMusing

Laura at Slice of Pi Quilts

Leanne at Devoted Quilter

Mania at Mania for Quilts

Maryellen at Mary Mack Made Mine

Michelle at Creative Blonde

Myra at Busy Hands Quilts

Nancy at Masterpiece Quilting

Pamela at PamelaQuilts

Sally at Sally Manke

Sandra at MMM Quilts

Sarah at Sarah Goer Quilts

Sharon at Yellow Cat Quilt Designs

Sherry at Powered by Quilting  

Stephanie at Steph Jacobson

Suzy at Adventurous Applique and Quilting

Teri at Lizard Creek Quilts

Tina at Quilting Affection Designs

Craftsy class

Save 33% On A Full Price Craftsy Class with code INSTRUCTORENROLL at Craftsy.com through 3/31/18.

Exp 3/31/18 11:59pm MST. Save 33% off the full retail price of any Craftsy class. Not valid for classes from our our partner, The Great Courses. Limit one item per customer and cannot be combined with other coupons.