Tag: Bonnie Hunter

Turkey Tracks: Green Turtles Quilt

Turkey Tracks:  August 13, 2013

“Green Turtles” Quilt

 

Just before Mike and my grandsons came in mid-July, I mailed my newest granddaughter, Cyanna Mel Enright, her baby quilt.

Called, “Green Turtles,” the pattern is from People, Places, and Quilts in Summerville, SC, which is just west of Charleston, SC.  They call the pattern “Happy Turtles”–and they are.

I hand appliqued the turtles and used scrappy fabrics for the borders.  I quilted with “Deb’s Swirls”–the medium version.

 

Green Turtles

In choosing scraps from my stash, I was reminded of other quilting projects.  Carrie and Fiona–you’ll see the pink plaid from Fiona’s baby quilt.  The stripe is from a purse project with Karen Johnson of The Community School.  Lucy Howser Stevens, one turtle is wearing the backing to your quilt of last year–the daisy floral on acid green.  There’s a fabric in here from my very first quilt, which went to JJ Viarella, who is now entering high school!!!  It’s the green on the bottom row, far right.  There is a blueberry fabric from my oldest grandchild’s baby quilt–Bowen Enright, who will be 10 in a few weeks.  And a green and pink floral/leaf that backed my niece’s quilt of last year–Mary Chandler Philpott.  And on it goes…

Here are some of the blocks:

Green Turtle block Green Turtle block 3

Green Turtle block 2

I love Bonnie Hunter’s method of putting on a label.  If you haven’t yet found Bonnie’s web site and blog, it’s http://quiltville.com.  She does a daily entry most days and highlights the work of her students all around the country–so sign up for her FB page as well.

The green turtle fabric came from People, Places, and Quilts on my April trip this year.   It seemed really fitting to find this fabric at the store that made the pattern.  The plain pink binding also came from my stash.

Green Turtles label

Here’s how the corner borders worked out.  I love the green and blue polka dot border.

Green Turtles borders

Here’s the backing and binding on the quilt top.

Green Turtles backing and binding

It’s a cute quilt, and I enjoyed the hand work.

Turkey Tracks: Green Camden Hills Beauty: Thanks Bonnie Hunter

Turkey Tracks:  July 13, 2013

Green Camden Hills Beauty:  Thanks Bonnie Hunter

Look at this beauty!

I think it’s one of the prettiest quilts I’ve ever made and its ALL from my green stash.

I saw Bonnie Hunter’s “Blue Ridge Beauty” in her ADVENTURES WITH LEADERS AND ENDERS and started piecing four-patch light and dark green patches as a “leader and ender” project fed into the machine when I needed to remove blocks from another project I was working on–that way, you never break your sewing thread and are working on two projects at once.  (You can read more about this method on Bonnie’s web page, www.quiltville.com.  You can get to her blog from the main site if you want to–and I have to say I love getting her posts.)

Green Camden Hills Beauty, 2

Of course, I had to piece some of the half-square triangles just to see how the block looked.  And then I had to see how multiple blocks were going to look.  Soon, I was piecing this quilt and NOT working on my original project.  I became, quickly, obsessed with this quilt.  And of course, I needed to sprinkle in some blocks that had green, yes, but also had some orange, some pink, and some blue.  They effect is very pleasing, as if there are polka dots scattered across the top.

It’s a BIG quilt–easily king size–and I didn’t make it quite as long as Bonnie did.  She took the pattern down one more row for the length.  I could make the quilt this wide since son Bryan helped me put four more feet into my long-arm–so now I have the full 12 feet.

Green Camden Hills Beauty

Here’s a close-up for you.  I quilted it with “Deb’s Swirls” in the big version.  (I smiled when I saw that Bonnie Hunter was also using this pantograph on her “Dancing Nines” project.)  I’ve later also gotten the medium version for smaller quilts.  It’s a very nice all-over swirling pattern.  I used a dark teal thread, which is pleasing to the eye I think.  We have such dark greens in our forests and on the hillsides in the spring–all mixed up with every shade of green imaginable.

Green Camden Hills Beauty blocks

Here’s a close-up of the border and a corner–that greenish stone-looking fabric has been hanging around my stash for years.  It’s PERFECT in this spot–echoing all our granite and rocky ledges on the Camden Hills–which are very old  mountains.

Green Camden Hills Borders

The back is all taken from my stash–which used up yards and yards of, again, green fabrics hanging around without a purpose.  I mixed in some orphan blocks that were going nowhere–and it all works really well for a scrappy quilts.  That saved me probably $80.  Or, used $80 that I’d already spent–however you want to think about it.  This backing works well for this scrappy quilt.

Green Camden Hills Beauty back

I pieced a line of the three-inch half-square triangle blocks to see what they might look like in a bar quilt.  They’re nice–and I might have gone that direction a year ago.  But after finding Bonnie Hunter’s work, I know there is a more complicated, complex way to use those blocks.  I’m piecing more of them as a leader ender project now…

Green Camden Hills Beauty back detail

This project has been so much fun for me!  And I really love this quilt.

Turkey Tracks: Refreshing Water!

Turkey Tracks:  June 30, 2013

Refreshing Water!

I follow Bonnie Hunter’s blog.  She’s an amazing quilter who specializes in scrappy quilts with an eye toward using up your quilting stash, finding cotton materials to reuse–as in cutting up cotton shirts–and using vintage sewing machines.  Periodically she holds “Quilt Cam” where she mounts a camera in her basement sewing room and as she sews, shows viewers what she is doing, and chats with them online.  She is sharing her own sewing time and urging those of us who can to join her in a sewing session.  When I can’t make a current Quilt Cam with her, I always replay her archived sessions and sew along in that way.

On a recent Quilt Cam, a friend of hers had just visited and made “the most refreshing water.”  Bonnie lives in North Carolina when she isn’t traveling and teaching, so it gets HOT and one gets THIRSTY.

The water is simple and absolutely delicious.  Take a gallon jar, slice a lime really thin, slice a cucumber really thin, throw in a handful of mint (especially if you have it in your yard as I do), fill the jar with water, and refrigerate it overnight.

Delicious!

This picture isn’t great, but you can see what mine looked like before I drank half of it.

 

Refreshing water

You can keep adding water until the lovely light taste is gone.  Then start over.

Cucumber juice is supposed to be really healthy.  But I don’t see why one couldn’t try other citrus and herb mixtures.  Orange with what?  Thyme?  Basil?  Rosemary?  Lemon with…   Grapefruit with…

Thank you Bonnie and Bonnie’s friend!

Turkey Tracks: Play Quilting

Turkey Tracks:  January 15, 2013

Play Quilting

I’ve been working really hard on sorting through my quilting stash–all the fabrics a quilter starts to accumulate–and cutting up all the smaller pieces into useable, accessible strips, blocks, or rectangles.  Those of you who follow this blog know that getting my stash under control has been going on for over two years now.  It’s just way too easy to keep buying new fabric for a new quilt without using up leftovers from previous quilts.

I am now using Bonnie Hunter’s coping strategy of keeping only large pieces for the stash and processing everything else.  Out of the greens, I’ve already made a gorgeous green scrappy top and backing–using up a ton of fabric that was just sitting around.  That top is ready to go on the long-arm, so I’ll return to it here when I’ve finished it.  I LOVE it.  It’s a green version of Bonnie Hunter’s “Blue Ridge Beauty” that I’m calling “Green Camden Hills Beauty.”  You’ve seen pieces of this top in earlier posts, and Bonnie’s version is on her web site, quiltville.com.

So, the green part of the stash is under control–dare I say?  And, I’m making good headway on the blue now.  I had already been working at the blue fabrics over the past two years, but I’m astonished how much of it I still have.  So many small pieces that are just lying around doing nothing but taking up space.

Yesterday, I could see that I was close to finishing cutting up the blues, so I let myself “play” at the machine for two hours–jointly working on two different types of projects.  I made myself quit about 8 p.m. last night because I could have gone on and on…

First, in Bonnie Hunter’s system–which you can explore in her four books and on her excellent web site, quiltville.com–NOTHING gets wasted.  The small bits of fabric she calls “crumbs.”  She throws them into a basket and uses them to “make fabric.”  Here’s an example:

Making fabric

These 2 1/2 by 8 1/2 strips will make really cute borders on a quilt when I have enough of them.  Bonnie Hunter uses old paper–phone book paper is the best as its thin and easy to tear away–as a backing.  It’s so much easier and lighter than the muslin I had been using for string-pieced blocks.  You could also use used printed paper from your printer, though that is heavier.

This “making” of fabric is growing in popularity these days.  In addition to Bonnie Hunter’s work, you can see the fun of making and using fabric in OUT OF THE BOX WITH EASY BLOCKS:  FUN WITH FREE-FORM PIECING, Mary Lou Weidman and Melanie Bautista McFarland and 15 MINUTES OF PLAY:  IMPROVISATIONAL QUILTS, Victoria Findlay Wolfe.  Weidman and Wolfe both have blogs as well.

I had some string-pieced blocks left from projects last year and have been throwing strips into a basket for when I wanted to make more of them.  I had only been throwing in strips that were at least 1 1/2 inches.  BUT, after making the border strips above, I can see that strips just under 1 1/2 inches are useable in both the string-pieced blocks and with the crumbs.  Really, the clear 1 1/2 strips should go into a separate box to be used for, say, nine-patches with one-inch blocks.  Or, piano keys borders.

Here’s my string basket, which is getting alarmingly full:

Basket of strips

Only there is a twist:  I’ve been tearing away also selvages with writing or colored dots with a little extra fabric in the strip.  I LOVE writing in a quilt and have become more and more intrigued with thinking how one might use selvage edges that are interesting.  So, here are examples of the kind of strips sith writing and/or dots I’ve been saving:

Basket of strips 2

Here are two blocks I made yesterday, hanging with one I already had.  I was playing with using the strips with writing on them:

Strip Piecing 1

Here’s a close-up:

Strip Piecing 2

And what the blocks might look like if I put them on point with sashing between…

Strip Piecing 3

Bonnie Hunter has lots of ideas of how to combine blocks when you have enough of them.

Meanwhile, it was really fun to let myself have a little “play” time–even though I have a quilt loaded on to the long arm and the BIG green quilt ready to be long-arm quilted.

Turkey Tracks: Rainy Day!

Turkey Tracks:  May 20, 2013

Rainy Day!

Finally, a rainy day!

My apologies for not posting sooner, but I have been OUTSIDE for days in this glorious spring, putting the garden back into order.

I’ve been in a planting frenzy, actually, and have really needed this rainy day.  With the generous and kind help of David Hannan, many tasks have been completed:  putting up the chicken fence and the vegetable garden fence, bringing out all the outdoor furniture from the top of the garage, putting away the boarding walk, rebuilding the rock wall on the drive where the snow plow folks couldn’t see where the rocks were, bringing out all of the container pots (I think there are at least 25) and filling them with dirt and planting them, mulching, mowing, weeding, pruning, edging, seeding, and planting a now-shady bed with shade plants and, in the sunny part, an herb garden that I hope will be more permanent.

Electrician David Dodge came and fixed the back outdoor plug and installed a new plug at the front door–which will make mowing with an electric mower and a LONG cord much easier.  And once he showed me how to take out the prong-plug expensive halogen bulbs in an under-the-counter kitchen light, I got new bulbs and replaced them.  I’m afraid I had to touch the bulbs though–the oils from your fingers can make them blow–but they were too tiny and slippery to grip and get into the two out of four right holes.   Anyway, right now, it’s working.

I’ll take pictures soon.  Meanwhile, here’s how the green scrappy quilt is coming along.  I’ve been quilting in the late afternoon through the early evening, and that’s been so relaxing.  This quilt is a green copy of Bonnie Hunter’s “Blue Ridge Beauty,” in her book LEADERS AND ENDERS.   I’m calling my version “Camden Hills Beauty,” and right now, the trees on the Camden Hills are so fluffy and are so many greens that I know this quilt is well-named.  The block is a traditional Jacob’s Ladder block, but I love Bonnie’s method of combining color with neutrals.  I used light greens, but Bonnie uses true “neutrals” in her quilts and just mixes them all up.  I LOVE this quilt!

Camden Hills Beauty top taking shape

Here’s a close-up of some of the blocks.  You can see I’ve mixed in some color–bits of pink and orange.  I like the way they are working in the quilt.

Camden Hills Beauty blocks

I started sewing together rows in the last few days–and realized I need 14 rows, not 12!!!  So, it’s back to piecing more blocks.  But that’s ok as I’m really enjoying this project.  AND, my green stash is diminishing, diminishing–which is a lovely feeling of usefulness.

At night, in front of the tv, I’ve been appliqueing the “Green Turtles” quilt turtles for new granddaughter Cyanna.  I am on the eighth turtle–of nine.  So as soon as I get the Camden Hills quilt off the design wall, up will go the Green Turtles.  You can see some of the blocks on the left side of the first picture.

The 14 rows will mean the quilt will have the DARK line predominant, which is better visually I think.

Turkey Tracks: Current Projects

Turkey Tracks:  April 6, 2013

Current Projects

Spring is on the move, but we’ve had a chilly, if sunny, week.

One of my current projects is to practice taking more videos in order to learn what works and what doesn’t.  I erased quite a few for various reasons.  One reason is that it is very hard to hold the cameras steady.  Here’s one of the Camden Harbor at low tide, with the spring-full river pouring into it.  At high tide, the water would rise to a foot or two below the docks.  The wind is high and the noise of it and of the river interferes a bit with what I’m saying.

It’s elver season, and people trap them at the mouths of rivers–as near as I can determine.  Elvers are little eels that fetch the most astonishing prices per pound.  These little guys are sold alive to the Japanese, mostly, who then raise them to be much bigger before eating them.

Have you ever eaten eel?  It’s delicious actually.  You could try it in a sushi restaurant.  It’s cooked with a sweet sauce of some sort.

Anyway, here’s the video:

I’ve almost finished a pair of socks for my sister-in-law, Maryann Enright.  She chose the yarn just before John died.  We had a nice visit one day around early December to our newest yarn shop in Rockland, Maine, called Over The Rainbow.  It’s a fabulous yarn shop, and we are so lucky to have it.  I think these socks might be a bit wilder than Maryann imagined, but she will rise to the occasion with them.  The yarn does not have black in it, but deep navy and dark plum and a tiny bit of dark brown.

Maryann's socks

I am working on an applique quilt made with big blocks of green turtles.  I have not done any applique in some time and am very slow at it, so I refreshed my skills (ha! that’s a joke) with this little Easter Card for Maryann–in a class at Coastal Quilters taught by Barb Melchiskey, who is a master appliquer.  If I were doing this card again, I’d chose either a colored card or a colored background.  The two whites aren’t working so well together, and I don’t like the lines running away from the eggs.  But the eggs!  Ah, the eggs.  Perfect for this very eggy household.

Egg Applique

The turtle applique quilt will get a lot of quilting to bring out texture in the blocks–on the domestic machine.  But, here’s one block ready to go.  Now I need to do more.  I have not decided whether to do 6 or 9 blocks…

Green Turtle block

What is really drawing me is the scrap quilt taking shape on the design wall.  This one calls me from other rooms to work on it.  I have fallen in love with Bonnie Hunter and ALL of her books:  LEADERS AND ENDERS, SCRAPS AND SHIRTTAILS I AND II, and STRING FLING.  She embodies the kind of work I love best to do–make functional quilts that people can curl up under or into and use as much of the stash fabrics as possible.

Bonnie’s motto is reuse, repurpose, recycle.  She has a monthly column in QUILTMAKERS and her web site is awesome.  There must be 50 free quilting patterns on that web site.  She’s coming in May to our state guild, Pine Tree Quilting Guild, on May 5th, and I will be there to see her quilts and meet her, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

Bonnie Hunter also promotes Victoria Findlay Wolfe’s new book:  15 MINUTES OF PLAY , which is so much fun.  Both Hunger and Wolfe are having way too much fun with their quilts, and both employ string piecing methods to great advantage and fun in their quilts.

Anyway, Hunter uses a method that I really like.  She cuts any pieces of fabric in her stash smaller than a fat quarter, or at the biggest, a half yard, into strips:  3 1/2 inches, 2 1/2 inches, 2 inches, 1 1/2 inches.  (I also cut 5 inches as I have rather a lot of those now and want to make a broken dishes block with them.)  These measurements work well together.  She divides these strips into light and dark piles.  When she starts a project, she’s already done a lot of cutting.  And she can cut the strips further down with rulers, like the Easy Angle ruler, into the shapes she wants.  (She also likes the Tri Rec ruler set.)  I’ve been using the Easy Angle ruler, and it makes PERFECT half square triangles, as long as you have an accurate 1/4 inch sewed seam.

This quilt started using Bonnie’s method described in LEADERS AND ENDERS, where you keep a basket next to your machine with some block parts in it–like two-inch squares.  When you would need to cut thread on another project, instead, you just feed a light and dark set of squares through the machine and cut off the piece you wanted to free on the back side of the needle.   In no time, you have a pile of sets of two squares sewn together.  You can finger press those and sew them to another set for a four-square–and so on.

Well!

Here’s what happened in short order at my sewing machine–the idea came from Hunter’s LEADERS AND ENDERS.  And it’s putting a real hurt on my green stash fabrics!!!!  I’m no longer just piecing squares  through the machine while working on another project.  I’m making time to make as many blocks as I can.

Quilt in Progress

Here’s the block:  a form of a Jacob’s Ladder block, depending on where you locate the dark and light of the half-square triangles.

Quilt block

I iron the half-square triangle blocks along the way, but I don’t iron the whole block until I’ve finished it.  I’ve had to trim up very, very few of them.  All have been a bit too big–with stretching from ironing mostly I think.  None have been too small.  Most are perfect.

The squares quickly overflowed from the basket as I cut into my stash.

Quilt squares

The basket got filled with half-square triangle pieces:

Quilt triangles

And I have a pile of strips all cut and ready to be cut further–and separated by value–so Bonnie is right that just a bit of cutting each day delivers a lot of sewing for days to come.  She also says that she groups medium and dark values together and relies on the REALLY light fabrics to create contrast in a quilt like this one.

Quilt strips

I finished and mailed a beautiful quilt for a beautiful bride, Ashley Malphrus, who will be married in Charleston later this month.  I will put up pictures when I get home from Charleston, and the bride has seen the quilt.  But I am delighted with it.

So, I will leave you with this picture:  the last bouquet of flowers from our CSA, Hope’s Edge, last summer.  Those days are coming around again.  Look at all that green in the windows.

Hope's Edge, last boquet, Sept. 2012

Turkey Tracks: Spinner

Turkey Tracks:  March 13, 2011

Spinner

I’ve been on a mission to use up more of my stash fabrics.  After all, I loved them when I bought them.  And, it’s true that I still love most of them now.

Whenever I finish a quilt, I cut small leftover pieces of fabric into the largest useable square I can, beginning with 6 inches and going down to 2 inches and 1 1/2 inch strips for log cabins.  Lately, though, especially after making this quilt, I’ve been cutting pieces into useable strips and not cutting further since this quilt needed a rectangle, not a square, so I had to cut those extra. 

The 8-inch “Spinner” block was designed by Bonnie Hunter and appeared in the March April 2010 (#132) issue of QUILTMAKER magazine.  Her idea is as you cut and sew other projects, you make a few of these blocks here and there, and soon, you’ll have enough for a quilt.  I found myself putting aside other projects and making all of these blocks uninterrupted.  They’re fairly addictive.     

What is helping control the quilt is the repeating red square within each block and across the quilt–a tactic Hunter recommends.  Here is a rather fuzzy picture since somehow very often I can’t seem to hold the camera still reliably.  But, note, also, the little quilt to the left, which was made from the small triangles that are cut off of Spinner’s large rectangle’s flip and sew method.  That small quilt is called “Essence,” since a friend who saw it on the design board said that it was the essence of the large quilt.  Essence is almost finished now, so will appear here soon no doubt.   

 

I quilted Spinner on Lucy the Long Arm, and I think it came out rather well.  I learned to use a round template on the outside borders.  I think I had old thread, however, and struggled with thread breaking a lot.  I got an additional thread spike that sits close to the take-up arm on the machine, so maybe that will help with the Mettler cottons I use for machine quilting on the domestic machine.   

 The pink pig backing, seen below, came when I realized Marge of Mainely Sewing in Nobleboro had some of this fabric left.  Remember that Karen Johnson,  The Community School student who learned to make a quilt with me last year, used it to back her quilt?  In fact, this quilt is very like Karen’s quilt, which probably shows how much I liked what she did.   You can see Karen’s quilt in the May 17, 2010, post called “Two Quilts.”  

 

Don’t know who it’s going to yet.

Turkey Tracks: Surprise Big and Little Quilts

Turkey Tracks:  September 30, 2010

Surprise Big and Little Quilts

When fall arrives, I often mark the season, it seems, with some reorganization project.  This year, it has been reorganizing my quilting room.  I’m trying to see if I can get a Handi Quilter Long Arm Machine in there without losing too much functionality.  It will mean replacing some long work tables with the machine, but I won’t need those long tables if I don’t have to hand layer and pin large quilts. 

Getting a long-arm is a long-held dream.  And, it’s a bit scary.  There’s a whole new learning curve for one thing.  Will I be able to master it to my levels of perfection, which are huge?  Will I be able to assemble the thing?  Will I be able to do the classes, which are 3 hours away?  Will I be able to use my existing threads?  It’s a process I’ve been inching toward for about 5 years now.  Getting a long-arm will significantly increase my productivity.  And I have about a dozen quilt projects lined up to do, and I love to piece.  And, I don’t ever want to give up learning something demanding and new.  Especially not something that brings so much pleasure to so many people. 

My younger son Bryan and his wife Corinne are expecting their first child, a girl, in early December, and we are so excited.  When they were here this summer, Corinne and I picked out fabrics for a diaper bag, two sets of fabrics for receiving blankets, and fabrics for a lively, colorful quilt.  I also have fabric for a baby quilt for my niece, who is expecting her first child, a boy, about this time.  And, my older son’s wife, Tami, went home this summer with my placemat loom, her own loom which my husband John made for her, and all her fabric already cut into strips.  She left me with the napkins, which I can hem in short order.  (We’re going to work on the placemats together at Thanksgiving.  I think she has a picture of a finished one on her blog:  http://6enrights.blogspot.com ).  And, I have a new purse cut out for me.  My current purse is in shreds.   

So why aren’t I working on any of these planned projects?  I’ve gotten badly side0tracked, it seems.  What’s going on?

Ok, whenever I finish a quilt, I take all the smallish bits of leftover fabric and cut it into useable sizes:  1 1/2-in strips for log cabins, squares from 2 to 6 inches,and rectangles in two sizes that I use.  I have bags of them now, and I keep telling myself that I need to start using them–though, as I said, I have at least a dozen other quilts to be made.  I’m always cutting out articles about interesting blocks to use “someday” for these scrappy leftovers.  This spring I saw an article in QUILTMAKER (March/April 2010) by Bonnie Hunter about a “Spinner” block that’s nice for scrappy quilts made with leftovers.  Hunter just keeps 4 squares in the block in one color as a unifying strategy.  Hunter says as she works she cuts leftover fabrics into sizes for the Spinner block and sews a block up when she has enough pieces.  Eventually she has a quilt.

I took out my sack of 2 1/2-inch squares and pulled out all the brights.  The unifying block would be red, though I added a few pinks and oranges to shake things up a bit.  Here’s what happened almost immediately:

 

Yes, there are two quilts.  I made the little one from the tiny triangles leftover from trimming out part of the Spinner block.  I think “possessed” would be the right descriptive word.   It took about a week!  Here’s a better look at the little guy,with which I’ve absolutely fallen in love.  I have no idea how I’m going to quilt it, but it seems to want some beading fringe at the bottom.   And, it will stay in my quilt room.

 

The big quilt–which is perfectly square despite the camera’s distortion of it–will go to someone.  There are bits of a black fabric with pink pigs in it.  I found more of it to use as the backing.  And, I think what’s going on with this whole surprise quilt thing is that the big quilt is meant to be my first quilt on the long-arm.  It’s made from scraps.  Well, ok, I did have to cut more fabrics in my stash to get all the colors, especially the red unifyling squares.  And I don’t have any emotional investment in it in terms of planning something special for a particular person.  I will be able to work on it without added stress.   

I promise, Bryan and Corinne and Tami, I’m going to get right onto our joint projects now that I’ve worked out this whole “use up the cut scraps” thing and have made the decision to call the long-arm people for prices.