Lavender Mountains: Planes, Trains & Automobiles Blog Hop!

"Lavender Mountains," 25" x 31", made by Pam Geisel, Jan 2016

Welcome to today's stop on the Island Batik Ambassador's "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" Blog Hop!

Today I'll share a quilted project made with brand new Island Batik fabric line "Desert Rose" and how you can enter a giveaway to win some Island Batik fabric of your own. (You can click on any photo to see it larger).

All of the Island Batik fabric that I used are available now. To find a location near you, visit the Island Batik Store Locator.

To make this art quilt I used four purples and two pinks from the Desert Rose Collection:

121507124

121505111

121514129

121514112

121503122

121503117

And for the sun I used 121500343 from the Sea Salt-Sandy Collection.

The theme of this blog hop is "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and back in 1996 my husband and I took the Empire Builder Amtrak train from Chicago to Seattle, with stopovers in Montana. One of my memories from that trip is when we were moving west as the sun was setting, it seemed to take a very long time to set. (And when we came back east it was over very quickly). The fabrics that I received from the Desert Rose Collection were the right colors to make a sunset quilt with.

I don't have photos of the sunset from that trip so I searched for images of sunsets in the mountains. There were several from the Blue Ridge Mountains that were wonderful examples of “Aerial Perspective,” which is how atmospheric conditions influence our perception of objects in the distance. As objects get further away, they appear lighter in tone, which is why the “mountains” in the background are lighter in color that the “mountains” in the foreground. Since I had four wonderful shades of purple to use and pink for the sky, I decided this would be my quilt for the blog hop.

Step 1 : Cut the fabrics at angles to represent mountains being careful to not cut straight lines. Leave about half an inch fabric for overlap, baste them to the batting and backing, then quilted along the fabric edges to keep them down. 

Step 2 : Use a variegated purple thread to do free motion stippling on the four purple mountains (more obvious on the darker and lighter purples) and couched a fun yarn at the edges of the purple fabrics.

Step 3 : Add the yellow fabric (taken from the Sea Salt-Sandy Collection). Couch some bumpy yellow yarn around the sun and added the clouds. 

Step 4 : For the clouds cut long, free-form oval shapes from the darker pink fabric, the lighter two purples, and from a sheer pink fabric. Quilted all of these down with a pink thread using curving lines going back and forth to catch the edges of the fabrics.

More about Lavender Mountains

Summer in the Country Blog Hop!

Welcome to today's stop on the Island Batik Ambassador's "Summer in the Country" Blog Hop!

Today I'll share two quilted projects made with brand new Island Batik fabrics, a recipe for chocolate peanut butter cookies, and how you can enter a giveaway to win some Island Batik fabric of your own. (You can click on any photo to see it larger).

"Summer Storm", 27" x 24", made by Pam Geisel, July 2015

This is my finished project, but I'd like to show you how it came together.

I used these blue Island Batiks from the "Jewels and Gems" (Lapis Lazuli) collection, from left to right: 611528022, 611529021, 611525017, 611531019, 611530020, 611524018

I came up with many designs but in the end I was seriously considering a traditional quilt pattern that I've always admired, Storm as Sea. Here's my computer sketches of the fabrics in that layout:

And while I might someday go back and make one of these, none of these ideas used all 6 pieces of fabric, so I decided to go with an original idea, although I did keep the "Storm" in the name.

Step 1: Cut fabric into 4.5" squares, lay in a checkerboard pattern with the two lightest fabrics filling the left three columns and the right two columns, and the darker fabrics alternating in columns four and five. For the directional fabric, be sure to keep it oriented horizontally to offset the verticalness of the two darker columns. Do not piece yet!

Step 2: Iron fusible webbing to the back of the two darkest and the tiny diamond fabrics. Cut out irregular zigzags that are a little longer than 4.5".  Place on fabric so they alternate horizontally and vertically. Fuse in place. Top stitch along fused edges with dark blue thread. Now piece the squares together.

I had already thought that "Summer Storm" would be a good name for this quilt, partially because I wasn't making the "Storm at Sea" quilt and also because the zigzags kind of reminded me of lightning bold shapes. The decision to use this name was confirmed when we lost power during a thunderstorm, right as I was piecing this quilt! 

Step 3: Cut two long thin strips from the wavy fabric. Iron fusible webbing to the back. Trim off some curves following the patterns on the fabric to make it more organic. Fuse in place where the dark fabric meets the light fabric to help make this transition softer.

Step 4: The quilt top is now pieced! Baste with batting and backing and quilt. I quilted vertical wavy lines with light blue thread on the light blue fabric and dark blue thread on the dark blue fabric and also in the waves of the wavy fabric.

  
Step 5: Hand quilt stitches using a light blue embroidery thread on the dark zigzags echoing their shape. For visual interest, have some stop part way.

While I was working on this piece, I was very interested in the light blue fabric that kind of looked like it had a snake skin pattern on it. I had some little pieces of dark blue that had fusible web on the back from where I cut out the zigzag shapes out.

"Blue Waves" framed mini quilt, 5" x 5", made by Pam Geisel, Aug. 2015

I wasn't sure what to do with this but it turns out I found a frame that was just the right size so I sewed some border fabric on, then quilted along the horizontal blue curves with a dark blue thread then framed it.

Here's a very close up shot of the fabric and the stitches.

More about Summer Storm

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All of this quilting and blogging makes me hungry and I see it's time for a snack. How about some chocolate peanut butter cookies?

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup peanut butter
3/4 cup butter
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 tsp baking powder
1.25 teaspoons of salt
4.5 cups of flour
5 Tbsp cocoa

Cream sugars and butter together
Add eggs (one at a time) and vanilla
Blend
Add baking powder, salt, and flour (1 cup at a time)
Mix well then roll into a ball
Take off 1/3 off the ball and add cocoa to it, blend well
Roll out chocolate dough into a log that is approx. 20” long
Make the vanilla dough into a log and then flatten it to approx. 4” x 20” rectangle
Lay the chocolate dough in the center of the vanilla and wrap it around the chocolate
Roll the dough until it is tube shaped
Cut in 1/8 to 1/4 inch slices
Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes
Remove from heat and cool on rack.

Make 3 dozen