On My Design Wall

Batiks in Small Doses

I've never been a fan of batiks.  Never.  I'm not sure why, but maybe because when batiks first became all the rage I was immersed in 30's prints.  Or, maybe because in my eternal but unsuccessful search of the Fountain of Youth, I've been afraid that using batiks would mean I would turn into a quilter who wears polyester elastic waist pants, Easy Spirit sneakers and a quilted vest.  Certainly not a goal of mine....

But after being immersed in batiks for two solid weeks stitching this quilt with my sister, I started seeing batiks in a new way.  And, I started seeing them in the landscape every where I looked - in fabulous sunsets, bare tree silhouettes against a winter sky, the rain.  And, because we needed to shop for a few more pieces of fabric to complete our project, I saw some batiks I really liked.

And then I remembered this lovely quilt by Elizabeth Hartman...

... in her outstanding book, The Practical Guide to Patchwork.

I had been wanting to make this version with jewel-toned vintage sheet scraps, but wasn't having any luck finding a good assortment of them.  And then it dawned on me that I could use the very smallest batik scraps from our quilt project to recreate Elizabeth's lovely quilt to remember our two-week labor of love.

I don't think I'll ever stitch a traditional quilt out of batiks, or start collecting batiks,  but I'm loving this project!  It should go together fairly quickly with fusible machine applique.*

*Note: I'm normally not a fan of the fusible machine applique method, but as I started preparing the shapes with the starch method with the plans of  hand appliqueing them, I didn't like how the batiks performed, so I switched plans.