Beach Therapy

Who doesn't love the sound of the waves crashing at the beach, or the smell of the salt air, or wiggling your toes in the wet sand?  This is what inspired my June quilt.  As an Island Batik Ambassador, we are given an assignment each month to complete with fabric that they sent me back in January.  This month the theme is Curvalicious! 

How perfect for me and my Curvalicious template!  

I have created lots of different Curvalicious items, so I thought it would be fun to create a different quilt for this monthly challenge. I had a stack of Island Batik fabrics that just arrived in quilt shops.  They had lots of fun designs.

 There was a wide variety of fabrics and  I pinned a few of them to my design wall and let it marinate for a few days.  With the 4th of July coming up some of the fabrics made me think of the beach, so I pulled out the lighter fabrics that reminded me of sand. 

I thought this would be a good opportunity to share a tutorial to create another variation on a Curvalicious quilt.  Usually the quilts are vertically oriented, but what  would it look like if the strips were placed horizontally? The concept behind a Curvalicious quilt is a pieced background with fusible appliques placed over the background.  The first step is to piece together 5- 1/2" strips.  I used 8  cream colored fabrics to make strips.

The next step is to cut 4" strips, the same length and iron paper backed fusible web to the wrong side.  I used pale blues.  

Remove the paper, fold it in half with the fusible side out.  

Place one edge of the Curvalicious  template on the fold and cut out the Curvalicious applique using a 28mm rotary cutter, The result is fusible curvy strips - one less than the number of pieced strips.

Start at the center and place on the of the applique strip over the center seam.  Press.

Stitch the strips down as they are fused with a machine blanket stitch.

This Superior Fantastico  thread was also given to me with the fabric.  It's a shiny polyester and I do love shiny.  It really stitches beautifully and I will definitely add it to my thread acquisition list.

Proceed to add the rest of the fusible strips, working out from the center, using Curvalicious for placement. Press.

Keep going until all of the seams are covered  with the fusible strips.

For the top and bottom borders, I used the font AR Christy, font size 500, to create fusible letters and stitched them down with the same blanket stitch that I used above with a blue/green Fantastico thread.

Then add the word borders to the top and bottom and quilt!

Wouldn't this look great in a beach house?

I grew up on Long Island and we called the ocean/sane the beach.  I live in the Philadelphia area and it's called the shore. I'm curious, what is it called where you live?

If  you are interested in seeing lots of other quilts that you can make with Cirvalicious, check out its website:

www.Curvalicious.net

You can buy Curvalicious from my Etsy shop.  Click HERE.