Island Batik Step by Step Challenge

The January 2022 challenge for Island Batik ambassadors was called “Step by Step”. We were challenged to make a quilt with a gradations fabric collection.

Watch the video to learn about this project and scroll down to see more details.

About the project

These basics fabrics are dyed in close shades of a colour to make a gradient.

The fabric, batting and thread was given to me as part of the Island Batik Ambassador program.

I was excited to receive the Tantalizing Teals collection. I love working with gradients, and these  colours are gorgeous.

I wanted to keep them in order, so I labelled each one with a number from 1 – 20.

There are so many patterns and designs that look beautiful with gradients of colour, but I decided to keep it simple and go with a basic nine patch blocks.

Making six inch blocks meant that there would be a lot of blocks in the quilt, and this would showcase the gradual change of colour.

I began by cutting 2-1/2” strips from all the fabrics. I was careful to keep the strips organized, so that I didn’t lose the order.

The nine patch blocks were made with the strip piecing construction method.

I made seven blocks in each colour, for a total of 140 blocks.

To lay them out, I sorted them into two piles – odd numbers and even numbers. Then I placed them in order, starting with one corner and moving down the quilt in diagonal rows, as shown in the diagram.

There are ten blocks across and fourteen blocks down, making the dimensions of the quilt 60” x 84”.

I laid them out on the table and they looked beautiful, but I was nervous of mixing them up, especially when my assistant came to “help”.

So I ended up labelling each block with it’s position 1-a, 1-b, etc.

My son told me that was a bit extreme, but it gave me peace of mind, and meant that I didn’t have to take anything apart because I put it in backwards.

After making the top, I still had fabric left, so I used big squares to piece the back. A border with the neutral fabric made it big enough This shows off the gradient just as well as the front.

One of the battings I received from Hobbs batting was Poly-Down, a premium polyester batting. I have never used this before, but I decided to try something new.

I used that poly batting, but didn’t want to squish it too much. I tacked the quilt in the centre of each nine patch block using a decorative star stitch on my sewing machine.

The neutral grey thread from Auriful was the perfect colour.

This gives it the same effect as being tied. It keeps it soft and squishy and lets the batting keep its bounce.

This tutorial from Jordan Fabrics is a great introduction to tying your quilts. This is the method I used, but did tacking stitches instead of tying with yarn.

I love how this quilt turned out. It is fluffy and soft and the colours look beautiful on both sides.

Thanks to Island Batik, Hobbs Batting and Aurifil Thread for providing me with the materials to make this.

Be sure to check out all the other Island Batik Ambassador projects:

You might also like …