insul-bright | East Dakota Quilter

At my first-ever meeting of the D.C. Modern Quilt Guild, I received some free fabric as part of the Riley Blake Challenge. The challenge rules are pretty broad: create anything from the fabric in the bundle, using any additional solids or Riley Blake fabrics you’d like, and post your project in the forum by February 17, 2014.

I decided to use the fabric to make something I was lacking: a trivet large enough for my roaster, which matches my [late] great grandma’s.

I adore the Marcelle Medallion design, and I decided to use it for my trivet. I tried paper piecing it this time. It was one of my first forrays into paper piecing, and it worked out pretty well, I think.

(I finished all but the binding of this project well before I started the Sew Kitschy paper piecing BOM. Check out my blocks here and here.)

My trivet includes a layer of Insul-Bright, which is a a heat-resistant batting. I would essentially have a mini quilt if I hadn’t used Insul-Bright. I later saw the Riley Blake blog has a free oven mitt tutorial using the same product, designed by Sew at Home Mummy. I even used the tutorial once before but didn’t manage to get a photo before I gave the oven mitt as a gift.

Another first for me on this project was hand quilting. I love the way it looks but was afraid to commit to doing a whole quilt. The trivet was a perfect size. I used Anna Maria Horner’s tutorial and size 5 purl cotton thread.

I scrounged my ever-growing stash for some backing fabric and was pleasantly surprised to discover I had many Riley Blake prints left over from my original Marcelle Medallion quilt. I picked this one in blue, and I love the star quilting from the front.