Day: June 28, 2016

Turkey Tracks: The Vermont Quilt Show

Turkey Tracks:  June 28, 2016

The Vermont Quilt Show

I drove over to Burlington, Vermont, this weekend to see Bellevue High School (1963) classmate Penny Rogers Camm and the Vermont Quilt Show.

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Can I say that we had a wonderful visit that included a lot of laughter.  She will come to me in September for a windjammer cruise (we go on different boats at the same time this year), for a visit to the Common Ground Fair (MOFGA), and to organize some quilting projects.  Penny went to the Vermont Quilt Show last year, loved the quilts, and thought she might like to get into this kind of sewing.  She will be a natural as she has a very strong design background.

I’ll do another post on some of the quilts, but for now I’ll leave you with a video of an amazing quilt the likes of which I have never seen.

So unusual!

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Turkey Tracks: The Gold Bug

Turkey Tracks:  June 28, 2016

The GOLD Bug

For two years now some bug has been eating my ornamental sweet potato vines.

Big, big holes.

Christine Annis showed me what it was on her last visit to trim the dog’s nails.  Christine’s business is House Calls For Pets, and her farm is Goose River Farm off Wiley Road.

I could not believe my eyes when she pushed back the leaves and found one of the “gold bugs.”

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This critter is as shiny as a lost gold earring dropped into the leaves.

It’s a Gold Tortoise Beetle, Metriona bicolor, and it specializes in ornamental sweet potato vines.

After two years, I have quite a few as they winter over just fine.  Like the Japanese Beetles, they will drop to the ground in a hurry if you shake the leaves.

Here’s one of the “bi color” versions, which is a clay red.

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I wondered at first if these were male/female colors, but the name suggests otherwise.

Nature is endlessly fascinating to me.  Why would a beetle like this be such a shiny color???  It certainly does not lend to camouflage, does it?

One of the best ways to handle them is to pick them off every chance you get.

 

Turkey Tracks: Mina’s Quilt: “Sugar and Spice”

Turkey Tracks:  June 28, 2016

Mina’s Quilt:  “Sugar and Spice”

I mailed granddaughter Mina’s “big girl” quilt to her last week.

The fabrics are an older collection of Kaffe Fasset prints that I bought some years back at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Norfolk/Hampton, Virginia.  The block is a “snowball” block.

The tiny triangles in the border mostly come from the corners of the snowball blocks.  But, of course, I had to make more.  I used my trusty Easy Angle ruler to make fairly quick work of that task.  And, I credit Bonnie Hunter’s teaching about the Easy Angle ruler for my constant use of it.  My half-square triangles come out perfectly with this ruler as long as my stitching line is a scant 1/4 inch.  Somewhere on one of Bonnie’s quilt I saw this use of triple, small, half-square triangle blocks used in a border.

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I used a cream and pink polka dot on the corners.

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Here’s a cornerstone “broken dishes” block to link the borders.  I had the orchid-colored fabric for the binding in my stash.  It was perfect for both sides of this quilt.

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This “suite” of fabrics came with a wild border print that could be fussy cut into borders.

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And a wild fabric that was perfect for the backing.  These “wild” fabrics drove the name “Sugar and Spice,” which is true, too, for this granddaughter.

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I used an Signature’s Victorian Rose thread.  The pantograph is 10″ Double Dutch, from Anne Bright and as are many of Anne Bright’s pantographs, detailed and complicated, but lovely.

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Quilt No. 128