A Fun Quilty Journey

Turkey Tracks: July 12, 2021

A Fun Quilty Journey

It started with seeing Debbie Jeske’s triangle quilt from a class she took with Alaskan quilter Maria Shell at this past year’s QuiltCon virtual (during covid) 2021 meeting—where Maria Shell also won a major award.

I am a big fan of both of these quilters.

Here’s Debbie’s quilt—which is based on Maria Shell’s “Rattlesnake” quilt—and which is on Debbie’s blog, A Quilter’s Table. Among her many workshop class offerings, Maria Shell teaches workshops on dynamic triangle quilts.

My heart started beating the minute I saw Debbie’s quilt. I pulled out Maria Shell’s book IMPROV PATCHWORK, which I have really wanted to start exploring during quilty “play” time, and reminded myself of her “Rattlesnake” quilt, which is featured in her book and in her workshop class list.

I am noticing now how Maria Shell’s triangle lines form a zig zag with her manipulation of the dark colors. Hmmm…. Flashlight! That’s the snake. I can be so dense sometimes when I get overwhelmed with pattern and color. No wonder this quilt is longer rather than wider. I’ll probably have to try this idea down the road. And I am also seeing how the side pieces to each triangle can be different dark colors, but also have some light “pop” colors thrown into the mix.

Anyway, I had an unused palette from this year’s The Color Collective, Tara Faughnan designer, for a project I couldn’t get my head around. (After 3 years and 20 projects, having only 2 projects that didn’t draw me in is an awesome record for Tara Faughnan.) I put the palette and Shell’s book and a picture of Jeske’s quilt in the “to-do play” pile until I had time to get to it.

And that happened this past week as a quilt top on the design wall got finished (“Monkey Business”) and there were several rainy days. Here’s my mostly finished top. There is one block on the far right that is too dark, so I’ll take few minutes to replace that one dark green patch today with the light green and call it a day.

The big challenge was balancing the colors. I did add the pale orange to the original palette. You would think that having 12 colors would be enough, but I really needed one more light color, and I think the orange addition was a good choice.

It will finish at 34 long by 45.5 wide—and I have absolutely no idea how I’ll quilt it. I’ll bind with the dark green, use whatever fabric in my stash that fits the back, and set it up as a wall hanging.

Amy Newbold and Tara Faughnan are going to do a season 4 of The Color Collective. I really feel like I have grown so much as an improv quilter due to The Color Collective, so likely I’ll continue this part of my quilty journey.