Mid October 2021 Update

Turkey Tracks: October 25, 2021

Mid-October 2021 Update

I spent most of last week outside putting the garden to bed and putting away outdoor things that get stored during the winter.

And yesterday I did the last mow and spent some time blowing off the new crop of fallen leaves to get ready for the crew coming this morning to do the heavy lifting I can’t do—like putting down the snow boardwalk—and the weed whacking I can’t do of trees that sprouted this past year in places where trees getting bigger pose future problems.

And I am still finishing up, but most of what I can do is now done until we have a hard freeze.

On some days I wasn’t too tired in the late afternoon to do another row of quilting on ”Joyful,” the wedding ring quilt designed by Tara Faughan. I used my solid scraps to make it, and I have loved working with all these colors. The binding has been installed and is being sewn down at night and all the threads on the front have now been buried.

I used the Innova attached ruler equipment to quilt ”Joyful,” as I thought it just needed something plain. Along the way, the extra heavy ruler foot arrived, and I installed it. The thicker foot makes working with rulers a lot easier. The quilting is NOT perfect—as using this ruler was another learning curve, but along the way I got better and better at making lines meet and not making rookie mistakes. In any case, the whole effect looks grand, and I’ll let it go at that.

The quilt really needed lines on the diagonal—it would have been easy to do a horizontal grid, but that would not have played well with these blocks. And as longarm quilters know, the longarm machine can only go on a diagonal as far as the quilting space allows. And, with the ruler foot supportive pad installed beneath the quilt, that space gets shortened as the pad bumps up against the rollers front and back. Plus, one has to ”travel” to get to the next horizontal line—so part of my learning curve involved accurate stitching in the ditch—which got better as I went along because I got way more comfortable with the machine itself.

I can’t wait to make this quilt again using a controlled fabric palette. The block is just so much fun to make.

Speaking of fabric palettes, the first month’s fabric for The Color Collective, season 4, is due to arrive in the mail today, and the first pattern designed by Tara Faughnan releases November 1. It’s a really fun quilt, and I look forward to playing with these new blocks. If you want to see the pattern, go to Tara’s Instagram account and take a look. I took a screenshot but don’t think I should use it without her permission. (The Color Collective online class is hosted by Sewtopia and runs for six months with Tara’s designs and one month with guest designer Annabel Lowe Wrigley.) When I have a few of my own blocks on the design wall, I will be able to share those.

Meanwhile, I’m working on the 12-inch block light grey/dark grey/black chimney log cabin project, AND I’m playing with a quilt idea seen in the most recent Simply Modern magazine. More on these projects along the way.

We have rain coming in, and I can use a few rainy days for sewing, weekly inside cleaning/laundry, and some cooking.