Pieced to Perfection

Welcome to the Island Batik Ambassador Pieced to Perfection Blog Hop. This month, the ambassadors worked on paper piecing! Paper piecing is a technique in quilting that uses paper as a foundation to stabilize the quilt block as it is constructed. Paper piecing makes perfect points and it is also called foundation paper piecing. There are many quilters who specialize in paper piecing; they have developed their own methods. Judy Niemeyer, Carol Doak, David Sirota and Jacqueline de Jonge are just a few of the well known paper piecers in the quilting world.

Earthly Greens is from the Spring 2023 collections and designed by Kathy Engle. I was assigned to make a quilt using this luscious collection with the paper piecing technique.

I thought of the forest, bears, deer and fall foliage. I designed some quilts in Electric Quilt 8 that had trees and leaves. Oh, and a bear too! Then, I saw these ready made paper piecing block pads by It's Sew Emma at Cotton Candy Fabrics. They were designed by Lori Holt of Bee In My Bonnet. I purchased the Economy Plus size that finished at 12" and the Economy size that finished at 6". Each pad has 42 foundation papers. There is a clear diagram in the pad that shows you how many papers you need for different size quilts (wallhanging, table runner, lap, large lap, twin, crib, queen and king). I used 25 papers, which was in between a lap and large lap size quilt, finishing at 64-1/2" by 64-1/2"; I also used 1" sashing (1-1/2" cut).

The great thing about using these pre-made paper piecing blocks, is that you can find this block in Electric Quilt 8. You can import images of the fabrics that you would like to use and plan your quilt! There are cutting and sewing directions in the pad as well. I do suggest cutting your large end triangles a bit larger than they tell you in the directions.

Remember our paper piecing steps:

Wrong side of fabric to the wrong side of space #1.
Fold on the line, use your add-a-quarter ruler.
Add the next piece of fabric (right side up) and sew on the line that you had previously folded.
Use a stitch length of about 1.70-1.80.
Press.
Fold on the next line and repeat.

I used my go to gray Aurifil 50 weight thread and Schmetz 70/10 Microtex needles, which are great for paper piecing. I purchase my Schmetz Microtex needles in bulk (100 needles in a box).

In addition to chain piecing, I also trimmed both sides of the block and sewed both fabrics on at the same sitting, so that I could save some time. Don't underestimate yourself, because paper piecing does take time to do.

I admit that I was having some trouble with the color placement. Each block looked so beautiful and the fabrics were so pretty; but yet, when I looked at my blocks together

on my design wall, things weren't looking very pleasing to me. I made up some smaller economy blocks using the 6" papers with the fabrics marmalade and seedling. It still wasn't working for me. So I used the fabrics cantaloupe, flour and chalk in some of my 12" blocks with seedling and cantaloupe as my cornerstones. I used the fabric mini leaves neutral ghost as my sashing and knew that finally I was making progress. Things were coming together now! I decided to keep my quilt in the large lap range, so I did not use all of the large blocks that I had made.

I asked my husband to take a look at my quilt on my design wall, and could tell he liked it. In fact, he said it looks like Autumn. My husband is the brown, tan, green, blue kind of guy. I am the bright purple, blue, red, yellow, pink, orange, lime green, black, gray, white kind of girl. So this was an excellent challenge for me that helped stretched my comfort zone.

I removed the paper from the back of my blocks, before I began sewing the sashing and rows together. I did not make a bear block; however, I purchased two nice paper piecing ones on Etsy.

Round Petal Floral Cantaloupe and Seedling by Island Batik.

Julia Price and Erin Byrne at Cotton Candy Fabrics quilted my quilt for me. I used Zen Chic - Green Vertical Grass by Island Batik for the binding.

I named my quilt "Greenville", because the northern most quilt store in the All New England Shop Hop is located in Greenville, Maine on Moosehead Lake. I had finished the binding on my quilt shortly before I went to Crazy Moose Fabrics in Greenville. The lake in the background is Moosehead Lake.

Earthly Greens Collection:

Rosemary: Multi Red Brown Yellow, Brown Jute

Flower With Leaves: Green Celery, Brown Russet

Dandelion Petals: Green Celery, Neutral Ghost, Green Ivy

Herb Bush: Green Ivy

Laves (Mint Basil): Green Turtle, Green Grass, Brown Russet

Mini Leaves: Green Turtle, Green Grass, Green Ivy, Neutral Ghost

Paisley Dot: Green Ivy, Multi Red Brown, Green Grass

Earthly Greens is coming to shops this fall! Please check your shops for the fabric I'm using in my project next month.

Don't forget to head over to the Island Batik blog to enter your chance to win a fabulous batik bundle; just follow the easy-to-use prompts on Rafflecopter. The giveaway ends on September 15th at 11:59 pm PDT. Two random winners will be notified by email on September 16th and announced on the Island Batik Facebook page on September 19th.

The full list of Ambassadors’ names and their post dates are as follows: