It's All Up To You

August is It's All Up To You for the Island Batik Ambassadors. There have been some amazing projects done by the Ambassadors this month. I love doing my own thing, but it can be a difficult decision; so many ideas and I wanted to do them all! I settled for a design that was not accepted by a magazine. I get many, many rejections!

What did I choose? Let's get started and I will show you. First, this quilt can be made with your scraps or yardage with just two blocks. I designed both the blocks and quilt in Electric Quilt 8. (For your own information, you can adjust the size of the blocks using a jelly roll).

I decided to use some yardage, 5" fabric strips and white, dark gray and medium gray solids from Island Batik. I used gray Aurifil 50 weight thread and Schmetz 70/10 needles.

The first block uses 3" squares and a 5-1/2" square. I cut 3" strips and then I strip pieced them. I cut 3" units from the strip sets.

I then chain pieced these units onto the white 5-1/2" squares. I pressed them and then joined two units together, to make a four-square unit. I sewed these new units onto the sides of the squares.

Next, I made the second block. This block again consisted of 5-1/2" and 3" squares, plus 3" by 5-1/2" strips. First, I chain pieced the light gray strips onto the white squares and pressed the units.

After I finished making 18 of each block type, I trimmed them all to 10-1/4".

I randomly alternated the two blocks; making six rows, with six blocks in each row.

I went to Cotton Candy Fabrics in Brookfield, Connecticut and Julia Price long armed my quilt for me. We chose a pretty digital design called Daffodil and a lighter blue variegated thread. I used Hobbs Heirloom Natural Cotton Batting. I used the medium gray for the binding.

This is my finished quilt. It is 59" x 59". The name of the quilt is "Square Dance."