Poems: February 7, 2018
It’s often warm in Maine this winter. And it’s often really cold. We have yo-yo weather these days.
As I write, we are expecting a major snow storm, but here on the coast the snow may turn to rain later today.
No No Penny and I had a lovely walk on Monday, the first in some time.
February 5, 2018
February 5, 2018
Turkey Tracks: February 7, 2018
Kimberly and Becca have been friends for a long time. Becca taught Kimberly how to make these funky trees, and the rest is history.
That’s a pretty advanced project for a newbie quilter. Go Kimerly!
Turkey Tracks: February 7, 2018
Some members in the Mt. Battie Modern Quilt Guild and the Coastal Quilters (Maine) are making Jen Kingwell’s “Long Time Gone” quilt this year–a few blocks each month with three months to put the finished blocks into the finished quilt. The design of this quilt is “improv.” Kingwell’s blocks are scrappy. You can google it to see. This quilt is lap size, so it isn’t a daunting project, but a fun one. Most of us are finishing up Tula Pink’s 100 Modern quilt blocks now, which was our challenge last year.
Here is a pic of “Long Time Gone,” so you can see where our blocks fit into the whole:
Our blocks are as different as we are as quilters—and all of them are gorgeous!
Tori Manzi got us going with her beautiful blocks, made with “grunge” fabrics. As near as I can tell, grunge is a solid with a marbled pattern. The polka dots are new grunge that just came on the market. We decided to do these three block forms for January to get a kick start on the project.
Tori manipulated color to get that center star, which also got us to thinking.
Love her all-white centers. These little 4-inch blocks are so fun to make.
Here are Linda Satkowski’s blocks so far. Note that Linda chose Kingwell’s pattern version for the star in star block AND that makes the white stars shine out. But she kept to consistent color arrangements.
Here are Lynn Vermeulen’s blocks==also in solids.
Here are Becca Babb’Brott’s scrappy versions:
Here are mine. I am using all Cotton+Steel because that bin is overflowing.
These are the February blocks. I manipulated these Jacob’s Ladder blocks for color. Kingwell did not.
Here is Linda Satkowski’s Jacob’s Ladder block:
And here is my Trip Around the World block:
Both Linda and Becca are working on their “Trips” now, so I’ll post them as they come in to me.
Turkey Tracks: February 7, 2018
Rebecca Babb-Brott recently finished this amazing spider web quilt made with selvages. Becca is an amazing designer, and I love her creativity.
So next she started to play with the way this design could be manipulated. Here she unconnected the spider webs from each other and put them into a strip.
Here she wondered if partial webs could make an interesting border. Yes! They do.
What about stripping what are the neutral pieces in the original design? Here’s what:
What if you stack them up?
She recently finished this improv quilt made from striped fabrics, at least in part.
And here she finished a quilt top she started with some Gee’s Bend quilters who teach in Maine every other year. No scissors were used in this quilt. It’s also an improv form. Becca used mostly solids, including Pepper Cory’s marvelous peppered cottons—whose colors are made by weaving together different cotton colors. These solids shimmer with life.
Oh my. I’m always hoping that some of her creativity will rub off on me. So far, a little has. Maybe that’s a goal for this quilty year. More improv… More play time… More creativity…
Turkey Tracks: February 7, 2018
Lynn finished it!
She controlled her Tula Pink 100 Modern blocks for color, and it came out so, so pretty.
Her grid is perfect.
This project was a challenge for Coastal Quilters last year: Tula Pink’s book is 100 MODERN QUILT BLOCKS.
Mine has been on my design wall for two months!! But I’m sewing it together now. Don’t even ask about how my grid looks.
These are BIG quilts.
Turkey Tracks: February 7, 2018
Tori is intrigued with ice dyeing. She made a rope bowl a bit back after ice dyeing the rope. (Only use pure cotton rope for dyeing. Polysester won’t take the dye.
Jim Vandersnoot recently did a program on ice dyeing for Coastal Quilters. That got Tori really going.
Here’s a “onsie” gift for a new baby. With socks.
What a great present!
But wait, there’s more: her giraffe quilt goes into the present as well:
Tori is “camdenmemom” on Instagram if you want more info on her work.
And here’s a selection of what she dyed recently.
Here’s a t-shirt quilt for a friend–from the friend’s t-shirts.
And here she is making a RUG with a package of Alison Glass strips. Tori loves Alison Glass fabrics.
Tori’s projects always amaze and intrigue me. Go Tori!
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