Having Fun with Funky Friends Factory and Island Batik Fabrics!

For April 2024, the Island Batik Ambassador challenge was to create a stuffed animal using a pattern from Funky Friends Factory.

If you’re not familiar with their many, many cute and whimsical stuffed toy patterns that they create, you must check out their offerings.

While we could choose any pattern we wanted (so many choices!), I decided to make the Mickey Moose pattern. It doesn’t get much more Canadian than a moose so I thought that Mickey Moose was the perfect choice!

I’m pleased to introduce you to my new studio companion, Mackenzie the Moose!

Thanks to Island Batik and Funky Friends Factory for providing me with the necessary fabric and pattern to make my version of Mickey Moose.

I used three different fabrics to make Mackenzie: Island Batik Foundations in Sprinkle for his body and two fabrics from the Woodstock fabric collection by Kathy Engle for Canton Village Quilt Works for the antlers, inside the ears, and the hooves and foot pads. I used Aurifil thread to stitch Mackenzie together.

You might notice that Mackenzie looks just a bit different from your typical moose and this is because he’s a very special albino moose. Yes, they do exist but you may never see them because they are very rare.

While Mackenzie is an albino moose, he’s also a Canadian moose and is proud to show his Canadian pride with his maple leaf tattoo. (I think he got this idea from the members of the RCMP Musical Ride 😉).

I chose the Mickey Moose pattern as it reminded of a series of books that my children loved to read when they were young. The Elliot the Moose books were created by Canadian author, Andrea Beck, and both myself and my children enjoyed following Elliot’s adventures with his friends.

Mackenzie calls to mind one particular Elliot the Moose book, Elliot’s Emergency where Elliot needs the help of his friends to stitch him up after an unfortunate snag and tear incident. Like Elliot, Mackenzie needed some hand stitching to make him complete.

While I don’t usually make stuffed animals, I was really pleased at how Mackenzie turned out. Yes, there are quite a few templates to make him but they are well labelled and indicate the number you need to cut of each and if you need to cut any reversed ones.

I printed out the templates on regular paper and glued them to the paper side of freezer paper. I then ironed them to the right side of the chosen fabrics and cut out the fabric pieces. By using freezer paper templates, I was able to reuse the templates when necessary and I’ll have them should I wish to create another Mickey Moose.

I really appreciated the step-by-step photo tutorial on the Funky Friends Factory website that gave additional information on how to successfully create my version of Mickey Moose. I found this and the other general information about working with her patterns that Pauline at Funky Friends Factory has on her website to be very helpful.

A few things that I would recommend when making any of the Funky Friends Factory stuffies:

• Use a lot of thin, sharp pins! Close pinning will ensure successful stitching.

• Mark everything from the templates onto your fabrics. This will help when you need to match up A to B or sew from G to H to M to H to G, for example.

• Read all the instructions through at least twice to ensure that you understand the process and watch the videos recommended for your pattern.

• Trust the pattern and take your time when stitching pieces together. I slowed my sewing machine down to a crawl and it made it very easy to ensure that everything was lining up properly and that I wasn’t creating any unintentional (and undesired!) fabric tucks.

Mackenzie has already made himself at home in my quilt studio as a studio assistant along with Salem and Victor – at least Mackenzie doesn’t shed fur on my Island Batik projects!

Mackenzie and Salem

Mackenzie and Victor

Be sure to check out the blogposts of my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors to see their cute creations using Funky Friends Factory patterns. You can find them at:

Brenda Alburl ~ Songbird Designs

Renee Atkinson ~ Pink Tulip Quilting

Megan Best ~ BestQuilter

Pamela Boatright ~ PamelaQuilts

Susan Deshensky ~ Lady Blue Quilts Studio

Brittany Fisher ~ Bobbin with Brittany

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~ Mania for quilts

Jane Hauprich ~ Stitch by Stitch Custom Quilting

Victoria Johnson ~ Forever Quilting for You

Connie Kauffman ~ Kauffman Designs

Connie Kresin Campbell ~ Freemotion by the River

Emily Leachman ~ The Darling Dogwood

Denise Looney ~ A Quiltery

Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights

Maryellen McAuliffe ~ Mary Mack Made Mine

Lisa Pickering ~ Lisa’s Quilting Passion

Sarah Pitcher ~ Pitcher’s Boutique

Lana Russel ~ Lana Quilts

Julia Schweri ~ Inflorescence Designs

Gail Sheppard ~ Quilting Gail

Carol Stanek ~ Stitch with Color

Sandra Starley ~ Textile Time Travels

Jennifer Thomas ~ Curlicue Creations

Suzy Webster ~ Websterquilt

Note: The products featured in this blogpost were given to me by Island Batik and Funky Friends Factory. Thank you!

#islandbatik #islandbatikambassador #loveislandbatik #createwitholiso #olisoconnects #aurifil #aurifilthread #funkyfriendsfactory #schmetz

It's All Up to Me…and Island Batik

For March 2024 the Island Batik challenge was “It’s All Up to You!”.

I’ve been wanting to make a modern quilt with arrow blocks for some time and this was my chance to do so using Island Batik fabrics.

While I’ve seen many quilts with arrow blocks online, I couldn’t find any instructions for the type of arrow block I wanted to make so… I asked my hubby (who is better at math than me) to help me design these blocks. They’re easy to make – once you understand the math.

Look for an upcoming YouTube video tutorial on making the arrow blocks I used in this quilt.

 Now that I knew how to make the arrow blocks, I needed to choose fabrics for them. I decided to use a triadic colour scheme of orange, aqua, and green and then threw in one arrow in yellow for an accent. I had several precut packages of Island Batik Stash Builders (5” x WOF strips) and was able to pick the fabrics for my arrow blocks from them. These Stash Builders had 2.8 yards of fabric and included Island Batik Foundations Blender fabrics in lots of vibrant colours.

When making this quilt, I wanted to have the arrow blocks scattered throughout the quilt with lots of negative space in between them in which to quilt new-to-me motifs. While you know that Island Batik have amazing batik fabrics, you might not know that they also have solid fabrics. I just happened to have some beautiful white Island Batik yardage which worked perfectly as my background and made the arrow blocks really pop!

I recently received several different battings from Hobbs Batting (a sponsor of the Island Batik Ambassador program) and one of them was their Bleached White 80/20 batting. I knew that this pure white batting would be perfect for this quilt due to the large amount of white fabric I used in the quilt top.

 I spent some time playing with the arrangement of the arrow blocks and, once I had decided on the block layout, I could then fill in the empty spaces with Island Batik white fabric. This allowed for lots of negative space in which to quilt some fun motifs.

 Due to the size of the arrow blocks (6” x 9”), I needed to do some quilting in each of them. I chose threads to match each of the Island Batik fabrics in each arrow block and did some straight line ruler quilting on each of the arrows. That was fairly simple but there was still a lot of negative space that needed to be filled!

I decided to add some “ghost” arrows to break up the large areas of white Island Batik fabric in the background. I then added ¼” ruler quilting inside each ghost arrow to decrease the space that needed to be quilted inside these arrows.

So far, so good…but there was still all that beautiful Island Batik white fabric that was crying out for some quilting. After lots of sketching and thinking, I decided to add overlapping spirals in the background and added some continuous squares and rectangles around the fabric arrows. I liked this look and then had to decide what quilt motifs to add inside the ghost arrows.

 This took much more thinking and sketching and I finally decided to break up the interior with rows of ¼” spaced vertical lines and then stitch freehand clamshells in the arrow shaft and head.

 I used an Island Batik Neutral, Egg White, for my backing fabric. I loved the subtle blend of delicate colours in this fabric. I thought about stitching together the remaining Stash Builder strips to create a pieced backing but I decided to save these for future projects.

 I added a label and some binding using the Island Batik white fabric and the quilt was done!

I called this quilt “Creative Directions”: some of the arrows are vertical or horizontal while the ghost arrows are going off on angles. I never approach things in a straight forward manner like the Island Batik fabric arrow blocks in the quilt. My thinking tends to wander and deviate from the normal path. I see my mind resembling the "ghost" arrows in quilting, angled and not aligned in a vertical or horizontal manner. The good part about this unconventional thinking is that I come up with lots and lots of ideas, like Creative Directions! Now if I only had the time to implement them…😉

 If you’ve ever made an arrow quilt, let me know what type of quilt motifs you used on your project.

Be sure to check out my Chatterbox Quilt’s Facebook page to see all the other wonderful quilts created by my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors during this fun challenge.

Be sure you’re following me on Facebook and Instagram so you won’t miss out on what I’ll be creating for my next Island Batik project in April 2024.

Also, check out my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors’ blogs to see what they’re working on next at:

Brenda Alburl ~ Songbird Designs

Renee Atkinson ~ Pink Tulip Quilting

Megan Best ~ BestQuilter

Pamela Boatright ~ PamelaQuilts

Susan Deshensky ~ Lady Blue Quilts Studio

Brittany Fisher ~ Bobbin with Brittany

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~ Mania for quilts

Jane Hauprich ~ Stitch by Stitch Custom Quilting

Victoria Johnson ~ Forever Quilting for You

Connie Kauffman ~ Kauffman Designs

Connie Kresin Campbell ~ Freemotion by the River

Emily Leachman ~ The Darling Dogwood

Denise Looney ~ A Quiltery

Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights

Maryellen McAuliffe ~ Mary Mack Made Mine

Lisa Pickering ~ Lisa’s Quilting Passion

Sarah Pitcher ~ Pitcher’s Boutique

Lana Russel ~ Lana Quilts

Julia Schweri ~ Inflorescence Designs

Gail Sheppard ~ Quilting Gail

Carol Stanek ~ Stitch with Color

Sandra Starley ~ Textile Time Travels

Jennifer Thomas ~ Curlicue Creations

Suzy Webster ~ Websterquilt

Note: The products featured in this blogpost were given to me by Island Batik. Thank you!

#islandbatik #islandbatikambassador #logcabinbloghop #loveislandbatik #hobbsbatting #hobbsinside #createwitholiso #olisoconnects

It's a Far Out Quilt for the Island Batik Log Cabin Blog Hop!

I’ve never made a log cabin quilt! There, I’ve said it. I know, it’s hard to believe but it’s unfortunately true. I’ve always wanted to make one and have made a large half log cabin block quilt (click here for details on that one) but as for an entire log cabin quilt - never happened. Fortunately, I’m an Island Batik Ambassador this year and the challenge for February 2024 was to make a log cabin quilt. Perfect! Finally the opportunity to make a log cabin quilt.

As an Island Batik Ambassador, I’m provided with fabric to use in these challenges and the fabric for this challenge was Woodstock by Kathy Engle for Canton Village Quilt Works.

Woodstock by Kathy Engle for Canton Village Quilt Works from Island Batik

I’m not sure if they gave me this fabric because they thought I was old enough to remember Woodstock (and yes, I am!) or because I said that I liked bright colours (I’m going with this one ;) ). In any case, it’s a fun and bright collection to work with and I really enjoyed creating the Far Out Log Cabin quilt with it. And yes, I’m old enough to remember when “far out!” was John Denver’s favourite phrase.

Woodstock comes in precuts as well as yardage!

It might seem a little challenging to take a groovy collection like Woodstock and make a project with a very traditional block like the log cabin block with it but I didn’t find this to be the case. I knew that I didn’t want to create a traditional looking log cabin block quilt with Woodstock so I opted for making a design that used these square blocks to create a circular and a diamond quilt design.

Far Out circular Log Cabin block created in EQ8

To achieve the desired effect, I needed to ensure two things:

• to have a contrast in either value or in colour in the fabrics I chose. In this collection, there are red, red/green, green, and blue colourways and I decided to group the red, red/green, and green fabrics together (Group A) and use them opposite the blue fabrics (Group B).

• that the fabrics in Group A were wider than the fabrics in Group B. All of the Group A fabrics were cut 2½” wide while those in Group B were 1½” in width. When 4 log cabin blocks were stitched together, it created a circular effect due to the differences in the fabric widths.

As with most log cabin quilts, rotating the individual blocks can create so many different and interesting variations. In the Far Out Log Cabin quilt I rotated the blocks to create two shapes: a circular one and one that looks diamond-ish.

Rotating the blocks created a diamond shape in the quilt

Far Out Log Cabin quilt designed in EQ8

There are different ways to construct log cabin quilt blocks and I chose the easiest (for me) technique which was to cut all of the strips to the appropriate length and then chain stitch them together. I found this gave me a more accurate block, rather than cutting the strips as I was piecing them.

One benefit to using Island Batik fabrics was that I got more cuts out of each strip. While I might usually get 4 cuts from regular fabric where there is about 40” of useable material, I would be able to get 5 cuts from the Island Batik fabric which is approximately 44” in width. Nice to be able to make that gorgeous fabric go further!

For more details about how I made the Far Out Log Cabin quilt, watch the video here or click on the image below.

I was really pleased by how this Far Out Log Cabin quilt turned out and I think the vibrant colours in the Woodstock collection were perfect for this design. A great way to modernize a traditional quilt block!

Be sure to check out my Chatterbox Quilt’s Facebook page to see all the other wonderful quilts created by my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors during this Log Cabin blog hop.

Also, go to my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors’ blogs to see what else they’re creating at:

Brenda Alburl ~ Songbird Designs

Renee Atkinson ~ Pink Tulip Quilting

Megan Best ~ BestQuilter

Pamela Boatright ~ PamelaQuilts

Susan Deshensky ~ Lady Blue Quilts Studio

Brittany Fisher ~ Bobbin with Brittany

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~ Mania for quilts

Jane Hauprich ~ Stitch by Stitch Custom Quilting

Victoria Johnson ~ Forever Quilting for You

Connie Kauffman ~ Kauffman Designs

Connie Kresin Campbell ~ Freemotion by the River

Emily Leachman ~ The Darling Dogwood

Denise Looney ~ A Quiltery

Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights

Maryellen McAuliffe ~ Mary Mack Made Mine

Lisa Pickering ~ Lisa’s Quilting Passion

Sarah Pitcher ~ Pitcher’s Boutique

Lana Russel ~ Lana Quilts

Julia Schweri ~ Inflorescence Designs

Gail Sheppard ~ Quilting Gail

Carol Stanek ~ Stitch with Color

Sandra Starley ~ Textile Time Travels

Jennifer Thomas ~ Curlicue Creations

Suzy Webster ~ Websterquilt

Have you ever made a log cabin block quilt? If so, let me know what quilt block setting you used in your quilt in the Comments below.

Be sure you’re following me on Facebook and Instagram so you won’t miss out on what I’ll be creating for my next Island Batik project in March 2024.

Note: The products featured in this blogpost were given to me by Island Batik. Thank you!

#islandbatik #islandbatikambassador #logcabinbloghop #loveislandbatik #hobbsbatting #hobbsinside #createwitholiso #olisoconnects

Log Cabin Blog Hop Week 3 Giveaway from Island Batik!

And the Island Batik Log Cabin Blog Hop continues into Week 3!

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the beautiful and creative projects that Island Batik Ambassadors have been sharing during February 2024 in the Log Cabin Blog Hop.

I’ve been sharing these on my Facebook and Instagram pages so I hope you’ve been keeping up with all the wonderful quilts being created by my fellow Ambassadors.

This week it’s my turn to share and I’ll be posting what I’ve created using the Woodstock collection by Kathy Engle for Canton Village Quilt Works later this week. Here’s another sneak peek at my project that you’ll soon see.

As in the previous two weeks, there is another giveaway happening this week. Enter your information below for a chance to win one of 2 fat quarter bundles of new Island Batik collections. For Week 3 Island Batik will be giving away a bundle of Squiggles, Dots and Lines by Deb Tucker’s Studio 180 Design and Romance Garden by Kathy Engle for Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting.

Be sure to enter your information below before February 24, 2024 for your chance to win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Be sure to check back later this week to see my log cabin project using the Woodstock collection by Kathy Engle for Canton Village Quilt Works.

Note: The products featured in this blogpost were given to me by Island Batik. Thank you!

#islandbatik #islandbatikambassador #hobbsbatting #hobbsinside #createwitholiso #olisoconnects #schmetz #schmetzneedles #studio180design

Week 2 Log Cabin Blog Hop Giveaway from Island Batik!

And the Island Batik Log Cabin Blog Hop continues into Week 2!

I’m constantly amazed by the incredible designs that the Island Batik Ambassadors create and it’s fascinating to me that even though we all had the same starting point: create a log cabin block project, there are so many variations on this traditional block.

I’m not quite finished my project yet but I’m working with the Woodstock collection by Kathy Engle for Canton Village Quilt Works and enjoying the vibrant colours and patterns of this groovy collection. Here’s a sneak peek of what I’m designing.

While I’m still working on my project for the Log Cabin Blog Hop, there are more gorgeous projects that other Island Batik Ambassadors have created this week.

Be sure you’re following me on Facebook and Instagram as I’ll be sharing what my fellow Ambassadors have designed with the Island Batik fabrics for Week 2 of the Log Cabin Blog Hop.

In addition to being inspired by my fellow Ambassadors, you’ll want to enter the giveaway this week for a chance to win one of 2 fat quarter bundles of new Island Batik collections. For Week 2 Island Batik will be giving away a bundle of Monarch by Kathy Engle and Love and Peace, also by Kathy Engle for Terri Vanden Bosck of Lizard Creek Quilting.

Be sure to enter your information below before February 17, 2024 for your chance to win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Be sure to check back next week to see what the giveaways are for Week 3 of the Log Cabin Blog Hop and to see my design using the luscious Island Batik fabrics!

Note: The products featured in this blogpost were given to me by Island Batik. Thank you!

#islandbatik #islandbatikambassador #hobbsbatting #hobbsinside #createwitholiso #olisoconnects #schmetz #schmetzneedles #studio180design