Make It Modern

It's the last day of May, so that must mean it's time to share another Island Batik ambassador quilt! This month is all about modern quilts!

When I was pondering this month's challenge, I decided on two things: I wanted to use the black and white solid fabrics by Island Batik, and I wanted to incorporate texture.

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

If you're new here, hello! I'm Laura! I design quilt patterns, and I'm a self-proclaimed deal hunter! Be sure to join the popular Quilting & Sewing Deals Facebook group where I post sales, deals, and coupon codes from all around the web!

The Island Batik fabrics and Hobbs batting for this quilt were given to me as part of the Island Batik ambassador program.

The black and white solid fabrics by Island Batik are a.m.a.z.i.n.g. Seriously the best solid fabrics out there. They have all the qualities of their batik fabrics (supple hand, high thread count, 44" width of fabric, extremely minimal fraying...) but are actually solids. So far, the solids only come in black, white, and a light gray.

I've been experimenting a lot with adding texture to my quilts lately. Three of my newly released patterns focus on texture (Cotton Candy, Pineapple Twist, and Hydra), so I wanted to experiment a bit more with texture for this challenge.

When surfing Pinterest, I discovered the work of artist Giuseppe Fierro from Italy. His collection of work titled "Made of Two - Posters" features some fantastic examples of black and white designs. One in particular really caught my eye. I immediately wanted to recreate it in quilt form. Giuseppe quickly responded to my email and granted me permission to make the quilt!

Original art by Giuseppe Fierro. Used with permission.

The quilt top is made with just four pieces of fabric and only one sewn seam. (And you thought my 3-hour quilt from last month was fast!) I wanted the quilt to be about 40" wide so I could use a regular width of fabric piece for the back. Some quick math gave me the needed size of each piece.

A quick tip too: I like to use white thread (specifically Aurifil 50wt #2021) when piecing white and black (or any dark) fabric. The dark fabric will hide the white thread, but any dark thread would show through the white. A light gray or light tan color also works great.

The triangles could have been made as flying geese or even half square triangles, but I chose to make them as giant (4" x 8") prairie points. This meant less seams and a fun texture element!

I chose the Island Batik gray solid for the backing and taped it to the floor.

When deciding on which batting to use, I laid three different kinds of Hobbs under the white portion of the quilt top to see what they would look like. The clear choice was bleached cotton. It really made the white become a bright white compared to the black batting and my usual go-to of 80/20 cotton/poly.

However, I only had a skinny remnant of the bleached cotton. It was definitely not enough for the whole quilt! When I laid it under just the white section of the quilt top, I was about 1" short. Plot twist! I decided to keep the bleached cotton under the white section and use the black batting under the black portion of the quilt top and butt the two battings right up next to each other where the seam of the quilt top was. I would trim the quilt after quilting to be 1" shorter on both the top and bottom to compensate.

I pin basted the sandwich, putting some extra pins along the seam line to help keep the two battings from shifting.

For quilting, I used Aurifil 50wt in White (#2021) and Black (#2692) and my walking foot to quilt horizontal straight lines that are about 1" apart. I just used the narrowest I could get my walking foot guide to go as the measurement.

I quilted the first line right next to the seam, no more than 1/8" away from it. Then I stitched all the parallel lines to that using the same thread color, making sure to lift the prairie point when needed. Once that half was done, I switched thread colors and repeated it for the other side.

The binding allowed for a bit of fun too! I used white binding around the black half of the quilt and black binding on the white half of the quilt. In order to make it work, I started sewing at one intersection, stopping before the other intersection. Then I worked a bit backwards to sew the other half of the binding down. Then I sewed the two ends together like normal - just being mindful of having the colors meet at the intersection.

Of course I machine stitched it down, BUT! I kept the thread tails from starting and stopping long and actually buried the threads in the binding!

The prairie points flop around a bit and have a hard time staying put when the quilt is hanging vertically, so I decided to tack them down just at the very tip with Aurifil 50wt thread. Yes, I hand sewed them!

The finished quilt measures about 40"x48", and it's the first time I've made a quilt from another artist's work!

I'm thinking about submitting the quilt for the Curated Quilts' black and white issue (submissions open in August), and I might even submit it to QuiltCon. I'm still undecided on that.

I do know I want to make more black and white quilts though!

Linking up with Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt, What I Made Monday at Pretty Piney, Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter, Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication, Needle & Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Put Your Foot Down at For the Love of Geese, Finished or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts, TGIFF at Devoted Quilter, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Friday Foto Fun at Powered by Quilting.

This post contains affiliate links. Clicking a link will NOT affect the purchase price.

__________

If you liked this post, you may also like these:

Teal Mini Swap Quilt Revealed!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Batiks Go Modern