Month: February 2021

AC Slater Loves His Red Rubber Ball

Turkey Tracks: February 5, 2021

AC Slater Loves His Red Rubber Ball

It is Friday. And we are getting rain later today, so AC and I went out late morning to run food errands and to make some time for AC to chase his red rubber ball to run out his kinks.

What amazes me is that he knows where we are in the car, and if we are near any of the places where he can chase his ball, he begins to “talk” to tell me he’s so ready to go when we get there. It is a rare day when I don’t take him somewhere to run.

It’s hard to throw the ball and take videos, but here’s what I got this late morning at the Barrett’s Cove parking lot. Look at that happy face and wagging tail as he brings the ball back. If I can get the ball ahead of him, he’ll put on a burst of speed that is so fast. I’ve started wondering if he’s got some greyhound in him somewhere.

For some reason, when he brings back the ball, he rubs all over my legs, going around and around my body.

When he starts to out of breath, I’ll do a few “short” throws where I pound the ball against the surface so it goes high in the air. Most of the time he catches it on the fly, which is pretty darn awesome.

Here’s a picture of Barrett’s Cove. It is just one of my favorite spots winter and summer.

When we got home, it started to snow—not rain. And it is so pretty.

A warm lunch was in order:

I cooked some chicken breasts in 14 minutes in the Instant Pot last night! So I had delicious leftover tender and tasty chicken and a cream-based sauce made with onions sauteed in ghee and with some heavy raw cream, dried herbs, and a bit of mustard added. I added more chicken broth to the leftover sauce after I put away the groceries, and quick-cooked some fresh broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots in the sauce while I got the chicken off the bone. I added the chicken and poured the whole thing over the leftover rice from last night. I cooked a whole bag of sprouted brown rice in the Instant Pot some days back and froze the extra rice in individual portions.

And now I’m going to finish lunch and have some sewing time.

I LOVE the Tulip Hand-Sewing Needles

Turkey Tracks: February 4, 2021

My love of the Tulip Sewing Needles started with the kind of “big stitch” hand quilting I often do that uses heavier threads. I prefer perle cotton size 8 and 12-weight cotton threads. The 12-weight is lighter than the size 8 cotton, but much heavier than a 50-weight thread such as I use with piecing. I prefer these threads to embroidery floss or the heavier perle cottons.

There are multiple manufacturers for these threads, so I am only limited by color availability. Red Rock Threads is a good place to start. Sulky’s 12-weight cotton threads also come in “mini” spools of 50 yards for $1.65 each, which allows one to collect an array of colors. And anyone reading this blog knows I love color in all forms.

I purchased the larger blue and ivory spools years ago—and I have a few of the blue and a lot of the ivory left. I have machine quilted quilt sandwhiches using either of these colors, but they lay down a strong line. I think they are best for grid quilting a quilt—and then decide if you want a strong quilting statement or not.

But, back to Tulip needles. My first ones were Sashiko needles. They are NOT cheap—they only come about 4 to a pack. BUT, they slide through fabric like a dream and they don’t bend. And I don’t have trouble threading them. In other words, these needles last. They are “polished” up and down to make them slide through the fabric easily. And they are available in many places online, including Amazon.

Here’s one of my Sashiko needles at work on my “My Splice” quilt with some 12-weight thread. The horizontal lines are from my longarm machine basting lines. I got a bit of a start on this project last night.

This quilt is going to look awesome when the hand quilting is done.

The Tulip needles come beautifully packaged.

Inside, one finds the actual container. This one contains 6 needles, two of each size.

This purchase of an assortment of straw needles was an experiment that I’m delighted to say is a happy one. Remember that the smaller the needle number, the bigger the needle. So, the size 8 is bigger than the other needles. I like all three of these needles. They are super sharp.

I lost one I was using to sew down the binding on Sugaridoo Rainbow a few days back. It fell out of the quilt sometime, likely, when I was finished for the night and folding it up. That led to vacuuming out the couch where I sit at night and then the whole carpet. And under the chair where I hang quilts I’m working on. But I’ve never found it. Lost needles have a funny way of appearing sometimes, so I am hoping this one does. And now I don’t leave the needle lose in my work—I clip it down with one of those little quilty clips we have all grown to love.

Sugaridoo Rainbow is now living on the stair bannister, and I’m enjoying seeing its happy face when I go up and down the stairs during the day. I will turn it about so I see different colors off and on.

My Tulip needle (a size 9 I think) did a great job with the Sugaridoo binding.

“Sugaridoo: Rainbow” is Done

Turkey Tracks: February 3, 2021

“Sugaridoo: Rainbow” is Done

This quilt is the result of the 2019-2020 Bernina Quilt-Along designed and managed by Sugaridoo. I’ve never done an online QAL, and this one was suggested by our leadership in Coastal Quilters (Maine) as a mechanism to learn some new techniques and patterns. We started in, if I remember, November 2019, and we got a new pattern for a new row once a month and the final assembly plan in the 13th month. Videos accompanied each month’s pattern and row release—so I now have these twelve patterns and some learned methods I didn’t know. And I did purchase the rainbow kit that Irene of Sugaridoo put together. I’ve never made a rainbow quilt. (Sugaridoo also included a color scheme that was not rainbow, and I’ve so enjoyed seeing what people who went that route and varied their colors produced.)

Here is another view—this quilt is 70 wide and about90 long. The pale grey background lent itself to using a pale grey thread for quilting. I wanted an extremely simple way to quilt this quilt as I do not do intensive quilting—I don’t have the skills or the patience—and I didn’t want to distract from the graphic nature of this quilt.

I saw many bright and wonderful backing fabrics as people begin to reveal their finished quilts. But I fell in love with this quiet backing fabric which holds the colors of the quilt more or less and just works to make the front brilliance a bit quieter.

I used the darker grey “highlight” (Kona Titanium), and I am happy with that choice.

I’m happy with how this quilt came out, and I enjoyed the year-long journey with Sugaridoo.

I made TWO of these quilts—as I’m always looking for fun ways to use my Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society fabrics. The second one will go on the longarm pretty soon now. All the parts are ready, and I will again quilt it with these simple curvy lines.

Snow Days Quilty Projects

Turkey Tracks: February 1, 2021

Snow Days Quilty Projects

We’re getting our first BIG storm tonight—with a lot of accumulation overnight.

That meant I had to cancel my right eye cataract surgery for tomorrow early. The reschedule date will be March 2. There was no question that I had to cancel—once it starts to snow hard, it isn’t safe to drive down and up Howe Hill or my steep and curving driveway where deep ditches live alongside. The plow guys get to me soon enough, so I just stay put until they do.

So, it’s brrr cold too, and I will work on sewing projects. I need to get “Trees” off the design wall to make space for a planned large log cabin quilt.

This “trees” block, as you may recall from other posts, is based on/inspired by a block by Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts. I’m planning 8 by 9 rows so will have a nice lap-size quilt. The tedious part of this quilt block is making the tree trunks. Piecing and trimming the block goes really fast actually.

I’ve often noted, as have other quilters I know, that it is so fun to start a project, but at some point, it becomes tedious to finish up the blocks. I’m sitting on my fingers now to finish this one before diving fully into the log cabin blue/grey project. And I’ve already started wondering about a log cabin with a black center chimney and light and dark greys. I’ve gone as far as cutting out the parts for one grey block to see how that looks. I’ve wanted to make an all grey quilt for some time.

Meanwhile, I have a BIG block of flying geese cut out to see how that looks—from a pattern in the “Simply Modern” magazine an issue back. More on this one later, of course. And then the 4th project from The Color Collective will be dropped today. The fabric is already here, and it is, as always, intriguing and pretty.

I’m taking a break from “Trees” (I finished the leftover parts of the “Pips” quilt yesterday) from time to time to iron/cut, iron/cut the blue grey fabrics for the log cabin.

The fabrics on the longarm bar are ironed and ready to cut into some strips. I’m almost done with the ironing and first cutting of strips. Meanwhile, all the fabrics I pulled from the stash or purchased (I was almost out of light grey fabrics and had no good medium dark blues), will be ironed and ready to cut when I need more strips. The ironed fabrics and strips are living on the long arm bed for the moment.

So now it is time to get dressed and get about this promising quilty day!