“La Bamba” – Hobbs Make It Modern Challenge

I am doing a little happy dance with this month’s Island Batik Challenge. One of the favorite things I like to do is take something traditional and shake up the colors and create something modern. Meet “La Bamba”. I have “shaken” up a traditional 54-40 or Fight block and created a more modern overall appearance using an unusual placement of fabric colors.

What’s inside the quilt matters

One of our Island Batik Ambassador sponsors, Hobbs Bonded Fibers provided us with the batting for this challenge.

Selecting the right batting for our quilts is one of the most important decisions we will make. There are a number of kinds of batting materials on the market to choose from. When I select a batting I take into consideration what the quilt will be used for. The quilt I made for this challenge is a wall hanging so I choose to use Heirloom® Premium 80/20 Black Cotton/Poly Blend.

Here are a few reasons why I selected this Hobbs batting for my Make It Modern Challenge.

1. The batting has exceptional strength and durability and it’s machine-washable. It is an excellent choice for a wall quilt.
2. I decided to use the black batting because it decreases the shadowing and stray thread tails from showing in this high contrast quilt. There are also no worries about the black dye in the Heirloom® Premium 80/20 Black Cotton/Poly Blend from bleeding when laundered.
3. It is soft to the touch and has a nice drape for the quilt hanging. It is excellent for machine quilting.
4. It has a nice loft to enhance the quilting on my wall hanging. This quilt is densely quilted and the low-loft batting shows the quilting stitches to enhance the overall design of the quilt top.
5. It will not create light fiber lint on the quilt top in the dark colors and black fabric areas during the quilting process.

Fabric selection is key to making a modern quilt

Picking out the fabric for this quilt was a lot of fun. I selected a nice variety of fabrics across the color wheel. I choose to use Island Batik’s Soul Song Stack and created high contrast using black, white, and grey Island Batik yardage.

A Island Batik Stack consists of:

• 10 inch by 10 inch fabric squares.
• 40 total, each pack contains 2 Sets of fabric squares, 100% cotton fabric.

Island Batik Soul Song Stack. Each pack contains 2 sets of 20 individual 10 inch by 10 inch fabric squares – 40 total.

Quilting adds additional texture and interest

I wanted the quilt to have a nice background texture, but did not want to have it be the main focus of the quilt. I wanted the design of the quilt to be the main visual element so the viewer’s eye danced across the quilt. I choose to quilt “La Bamba” with a modern all-over elongated orange peel design using Aurifil’s 50wt. white cotton thread. The 50wt thread gives nice definition to the quilting stitches and blends in well with all the colors in the quilt top.