March is “Try a New Technique” Month for the Island Batik Ambassador team, and I’m feeling inspired!

Try a new technique?!! You’ll never likely have to ask me twice!! I have loooooong lists of quilty things I want to try “one day”…. patterns to make, gadgets to play with, embellishments and paints and markers and machines and .attachments and ……. and …… and……. and that doesn’t include the countless really cool things I have seen and forgotten along the way. “Try a New Technique” is practically my quilting motto!

Finishing a project I’ve started while trying a new technique…… now that’s a slightly different story…..  but this month I am going to nail that one too. 🙂

Blue Moon colours

Sometimes in fabricland, the experts kindly hand you the exact colour palette you want to use. On a silver platter, even. That’s how I feel about the Blue Moon batik collection from Island Batik. As you may recall, I was sent a pack of 10″ Blue Moon squares and two pieces as yardage to work with  in my role as an Island Batik Ambassador. 

I was over the moon to find these in my Island Batik Ambassador box. This line features my three favourite colours: blue, teal/aqua and purple. I have quilted in these colours before, but I’ve had to collect yardage from all over to do it. Now I get to do it again, but effort free. All that energy that I would normally expend on choosing and tracking down the right fabrics can go straight into designing a project to test drive my new-to-me technique.

On that matter: I have decided that I want to try “invisible machine appliqué”.

Invisible Machine Appliqué

As most of you know, I have been doing a lot of appliqué lately. All of it of the free motion raw edge kind. That’s not necessarily a reflection of what I prefer in appliqué, although I do quite like it. However, I do also like the look of turned edge appliqué. But, the reality is, raw edge appliqué is faster. Much faster! And I have young kids and lots of ideas….

But a demo I saw recently at my local quilt guild intrigued me.  It was how to do  turned edge appliqué on your sewing machine. If you want to find out more, I found this fantastic free lesson series at Generations Quilt Patterns that matches what I saw. Now, I know that this technique is still not the real deal for hand appliqué purists, but it is as close as one is likely to get to traditional appliqué without time for hand sewing, so I thought I would like to give it a try.

The Blue Moon Project

So, for March I have chosen invisible machine appliqué as my new-to-me technique. But what to try it on? A pillow? Us Ambassadors will be doing pillows in May. A mini? Well, we’ve just done a mini quilt, so nah…… A big quilt? What if I hate this technique? I don’t want to become a slave to it!

That’s where being in love with the Blue Moon fabrics has helped me out. I have to make something small enough that I have enough fabric to do it with. Something that can be made of 10″ squares. And something that I need…. because these fabrics are keepers, and I want to see them regularly for a long time to come.

So, I am going to make a cover for my Handiquilter Sweet Sixteen sit-down quilting machine. She is nearly 1 year old now and still has no proper cover. I think this is a brilliant plan, not the least because I will enjoy having a pretty dust cover for my machine. But also because I know I can incorporate a few other “new things” into this project.

My extra New-to-Me Opportunities

I am going to try the HOBBS Thermore batting that was included in our Ambassador boxes in this project.

This will give me a chance to see what it is like – how it handles, drapes, quilts up etc. I also specifically want to see how Thermore behaves when I do raw edge appliqué, so I will decorate my sewing machine cover with a mix of raw edge and the invisible machine stitched turned edge appliqué. I am also going to give single-fold binding a whirl – can you believe it has never occurred to try this technique before? All that talk about mini quilts amongst the IB Ambassadors in February brought it up, so I added it to my list of things to try – and now I’m going to try it. I think that’s it for new stuff, at least for now.

So, perhaps not my usual offering for Colour Inspiration Tuesday, but a colour-to-project thought-train nonetheless. Do you find yourself making projects because there are lines of fabric you just had to have/keep? I usually purchase and make to purpose rather than make to the supplies I have acquired. But this opposite design process is fun too. I get to try all these new things, and my Sweet Sixteen gets a new home! As you can see from the photos, I have already started. I hope to be able to share more progress with you very soon!

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