Tropical Twist

May I present my first finish of October. Tropical Twist is done and ready to be listed in my Etsy shop.

A bit of a tropical setting sets off the vibrant colours of the batik fabrics in this quilt. It feels so good to get a pretty stack of batik fat quarters off the shelf and into a quilt. 

This was a set of 20, of which I used 17, from Craftsy purchased in 2017 (the file has that date so that's how I know!). It came with the pattern which in itself is a bit of a puzzle: it doesn't have a name on the pages nor a designer, though the file is labelled as Puzzle Tropics! 

The open swirl quilting worked out well across the quilt. I had to use a few echoes and swirls with hooks to maneuver around and fill in awkward spaces but it works; the overall effect is just what I’d hoped. 

I used Hobbs 100% wool for beautiful loft and texture. It’s always amazing how much lighter wool is than cotton but every bit as warm if not more so. A light blue thread called Sky from Connecting Threads blends in wonderfully over all the colours. It’s a bit more visible on the black polka dot batiks but I think once the quilt is washed it will sink in just fine. 

The backing is yardage I picked up in the Clearance section of Sew Sisters several years ago as well. This was destined for another potential quilt back and recipient but circumstances changed. So it feels good to get the backing out of the backing vault and into a quilt for which you'd think I'd bought it, the colours work so well, front and back!

I took care to match the long vertical seam as best as I could, and I'm pleased with the result! Because I had that one long vertical seam, I loaded the quilt sideways onto Avril, so that seam is parallel to the roller bars. The long seam tends not to give to the same extent that the backing fabric does, so it can create puckers, though I haven't had a problem in quilts where I did load them vertically. Since I was doing an all-over quilting design, quilting 'sideways' had no bearing on the finished flow.

I used the scraps of several of the fat quarters to make the binding. It's perfect!

I squeezed in my initials in the lower corner of the quilt. That was the hardest part: 'writing' my initials sideways!

One last shot on the newly redone front porch, with beautiful chrysanthemums given to us by sweet Marybeth, who looked after Bella while we were away. She only bought these three weeks ago, but cleaned out her flowerbeds on Thanksgiving weekend with her kids' help, and insisted we take these or they were going in the garbage! Meanwhile our temperatures have been in the low 20s Celsius all week with no frosts in sight, and, as you can see from the first photo, our tropicals, including bananas and elephant ears, my mandevilla vine, and cannas, are all still happy as clams!

I have started ironing fat quarters for another Craftsy or bluprint quilt kit I bought, this one for our bed. Don't worry; I plan to keep on making the last of the blocks for the Sewcial Bee Sampler.

And because I never have nothing quilting related on the go, ha, I also have started writing up one of three patterns that still are asking to go out into the world, quilts I made earlier this year. So yes, boredom is not in my wheelhouse. Ever.

Quilt Stats:

Size: 48" x 60"

Pattern: Puzzle Tropics
Fabric: batiks from Craftsy

Batting: Hobbs Heirloom Premium 100% wool

Backing: Bohemian Roosters by Daphne B for Wilmington Prints

Quilted: on Avril,  67 760 stitches

Threads: pieced with Gütermann cotton on my Bernina; quilted with Essential cotton 21251 sky; Floriani rayon in the bobbin

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