Saturday, October 14, 2017

Latitude Batik Quilt (#86)

Kate Spain has to rate as my favorite overall fabric designer.  She talks about her inspiration for this collection here on her blog ... beautiful colors, beautiful designs.
The pattern for this quilt is Juice Boxes from  Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew (a lovely blog and assortment of patterns). The heart motif tutorial is from Karin Jordan Studio where I used 1.5" squares and added a little border - all blocks were trimmed to 7".

Starch works nicely on this thin fabric, as does a #10 needle and Aurifil 50 wt. thread.  A light blue grey Aurifil 50wt. #5007 looks good with all the colors, even the warmer tones.
Scraps for the edging were cut at 1.5" wide.  I then sewed 2 pieces together and cut them 6 inches long (3" on one side of the seam line, 3" on the other).   That gave me a bunch of 6" x 1.5" units to sew together to make one long piece.  
There are a total of 88 squares - 8 across and 11 down. 1.5" white strip of Kona was sewn to the batik scraps and pressed.  Lastly, a 2.5" white border added all around.
White minky is on the back to showcase all the luscious colors and designs on the front. 
It was necessary to use a #14 needle to prevent thread breaks when quilting.  A new needle and slower speed worked just fine and didn't punch holes in the batiks - yay!
When I gifted my Kaleidoscope Quilt in May to a retiring teacher from my daughter's high school - a fellow teacher wrote her farewell speech using that quilt as inspiration.  I was so touched when she was telling me this story I could only think ... 'this sweet lady needs her own quilt!"  She was wearing a jacket in jewel tones and I knew right then her quilt had to be in Latitude Batiks.  

Materials:
Latitude Batiks / Kate Spain (#LatitudeBatiks)
Kona white
Aurifil 50wt. #5007 & white
Warm & White batting
Minky dimple dot / white
Juice Boxes from Cluck Cluck Sew
Size: 60" x 75.5"
October 2017