Turkey Tracks: My Sugaridoo QAL Rows So Far

Turkey Tracks: January 29, 2020

My Sugaridoo QAL Rows So Far

We have a number of new quilters at Coastal Quilters these days. Our CQ president, Tori Manzi, who is an internet wizard, found this Bernina-sponsored Sugaridoo QAL (quilt-a-long) and encouraged CQ members to do it. A bunch of us are… This QAL is meant to teach all kinds of quilty methods and lasts for a year.

Irene is Sugaridoo—and she quilts and designs patters, is multi-lingual, and lives in the Netherlands. She is also totally adorable—a very happy and sunny personality.

You can join up anytime—all the info is on the Bernina website.

Here is the schematic for the year—you can see that each row has an accent piece in the dark grey. I am doing this rainbow version in Kona solids, but there is another version as well.

We have completed three rows now: 1, 5, and 12. Row 1 is made with the freezer paper method, which I have grown to really like. The other two rows really need to be pieced.

There is a FB page where people can discuss progress and post images. There is a lot of discussion there about seam size versus unit size in order to create blocks and rows that measure correctly. Irene, though, keeps telling everyone “not to worry,” that it will all work out.

The finished quilt will be something like 70 by 90 inches.

I seem to be doing two quilts however…

I’m not sure how that happened…

I’m using Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society colored fabrics with their neutrals as much as I can. Who knows how this work out within the rainbow design.

Here are some close-ups of the novelty fabrics:

Turkey Tracks: Penny Rogers Camm’s First Quilt

Turkey Tracks: October 21, 2016

Penny Rogers Camm’s First Quilt

Penny Rogers Camm and I graduated from Bellevue High School in Bellevue, Nebraska, in 1963. We knew each other then, but were not close friends.

Bellevue sits outside Omaha, Nebraska, and is the home of Offutt Air Force Base.

We are Air Force Brats.

Penny lives in Burlington, Vermont, in the summer, and we reconnected almost four years ago now as Penny comes to Mid-Coast Maine to sail on the windjammer Stephen Taber in September. She called me, and we wound up spending several days together and going to the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association (MOFGA) Common Ground Fair.

Last summer she asked me to come to Vermont for the annual quilt show. She had gone the year before and was intrigued with quilting.

I went, and Penny decide she wanted to learn to quilt. We started this quilt in September when she came to sail–and now to quilt.

Here is her FIRST QUILT TOP–which is for a family child of about three. The block is from Bonnie Hunter: “Carolina Chain,” which is in her new book, ADDICTED TO SCRAPS.

Cute border fabric.

Here we are layering the top with the batting and backing. That’s my Amy Friend quilt on the longarm, “Tell Me A Story,” which is ready to quilt now.

Penny is going to hand-quilt with various colors of size 8 pearl cotton.

AND Penny decided last summer to go on the Coastal Quilters (Maine) October retreat to the Franciscan Guest House in Kennebunk, Maine, where she started her SECOND QUILT.

Folks, she fell in love with Amy Friends “Tell Me A Story” quilt which is FOUNDATION PIECED.

Love her background fabric with these blocks, though it gave both of us fits for a time until we worked out the orientations.

It will be 7 blocks by 8 blocks, so she went home yesterday with a good start and other blocks cut. This quilt is going in Penny’s den.

Penny is coming back in early December to learn to do the binding on the first quilt and, maybe, to layer and start quilting the second one.

AND, she has visions of other quilts dancing in her head already.

Here she is at our retreat:

Turkey Tracks: May’s Farmer’s Wife Blocks

Turkey Tracks: May 31, 2016

May’s Farmer’s Wife Blocks

Those who read this blog may remember that I am part of a Coastal Quilters (Maine) group whose members are making eight blocks a month from the book THE FARMER’S WIFE 1930 SAMPLER QUILT buy Laurie Aaron Hird. AND that I’m going to set these blocks in this lovely teal fabric.

I’m down to the wire this month–so many wonderful quilt projects and not enough time–but here are my eight May blocks. This eight makes 40 of the 99–so not quite half way.

On to the June blocks!

Turkey Tracks: Quilting: Coastal Quilters 2016 Challenge

Turkey Tracks: October 30, 2015

Coastal Quilters of Camden, Maine

2016 Chapter Challenge

This challenge is about exploring opposite colors on the color wheel.

We also had to include white, black, and grey.

The piece had to contain 16 pieces and be 16 by 16 inches.

Here’s mine–and trust me, it will pale in comparison with the creativity that some of the other Coastal Quilter members will devise.

I am, though, interested at the moment in how geometric shapes work together.

Purple and yellow are my opposite colors. The primary colors (red, blue, yellow) and their opposites (green, orange, purple, really a blue violet) create the biggest visual “pop”–and to me, the purple/yellow combo is the most startling. Red/green and blue/orange seem much more mellow to me.

One of the fallen petals is black.

In order to keep to 16 pieces, I used the background piece and the arrangements of the hexagons to make the center star.

Then I used pearl cotton to “quilt” the piece–and had to search to find the violet/purple color.

I left gaps in the stitching ini places to accent the dominate shape.

The buttons were in my stash of buttons and matched perfectly. Lucky find there.

Hexagons can be linked via diamonds–and three diamonds can work together to create the hexagon shape–which you can see when one diamond is removed from the hexagon. That manipulation of color–as you can see in the top right with the grey area–can make the “tumbling block” that is so interesting in a quilt. You would make a light “top” triangle, a medium triangle, and a dark triangle–and keep the color placement fixed.

The hexagon can also be fractured into parts using the kite-shape. Remember this quilt? My 100th, which I called “Centurion.”

See the block up close. The outer ring of neutrals is also made from the kite shape.

I am, at the moment, working with some large hexies in purple with yellow diamond joins–not sure how this study will develop, but it will be the last of my color studies.

Here, again, is red and green:

This is the Lucy Boston “honey comb” hexie being paper pieced.

And, here’s blue and orange–made with large Octagons linked with squares:

Turkey Tracks: Bits and Pieces in Early May

Turkey Tracks: May 4, 2014

Bits and Pieces in Early May

I stopped by Fresh Off the Farm yesterday to get a few vegetables.

I could not resist the organic Driscoll strawberries. They looked luscious, and I was hungry.

I had some this morning, and I knew from the moment I touched them that I had made a “hungry” mistake: bright red, but sour as lemons.

*** * ***

I am so enjoying reading, now, Jennifer McGruther’s The Nourished Kitchen.

Here’s a quote I wish I had read yesterday when I bought those pitiful strawberries:

Fruits and vegetables prepared in their season bring joy to the table. As the days turn from dark to light as spring nears, and just when you’ve had enough of hearty stews and root vegetables, the brightest and lightest of vegetables appear–sprouts, herbs, tiny little strawberries, and crisp lettuces. These vegetables fade and bolt with the heat of summer that, in its turn, brings robust and juicy foods–watermelons, vivid red tomatoes, and plums that drip with juice at the first bite. The days grow dark and cold once more, and the apples, pumpkins, potatoes, and roots return. The changing seasons bring excitement and heady anticipation that cannot exist in the seasonless aisles of the supermarket.

I have a feeling that the chickens will enjoy the strawberries. I’ll be waiting for my own to come into season, and believe me, they are worth the wait.

*** * ***

I woke to rain this morning. And, then, magically the sun came out, and I changed clothes and went out.

The project: replanting the climbing rose and clematis in front of the new fence panels that shield the propane tanks and the generator. AND, re-carving out the flower beds in front of those panels.

As I worked, it was glorious to see the summer thunderstorm moving towards us. And to hear it!

It was NOT glorious to see the chickens out of the fence that I installed yesterday. They are jumping over it from a large bush next to the fence. But they have to stay inside as fox ate one of the hens this week–one of the two hens that are actually laying. You will remember that the pattern last year was one missing hen one day, all chickens missing the next… So as the rain came in, I was shooing chickens back inside their enclosure. (I have an idea for how to block that jumping off bush.) And I’m hoping that one of the hens will go “broody” and raise a batch of eggs by my sweet rooster and the one hen that is laying.

Anyway, Miss Reynolds Georgia is terrified by thunder. She is presently in her laundry basket at my side, shaking and under the covers:

Anyway, when it stops raining, I’ll post some pictures of all the work that Stephen Pennoyer has made possible at this house. I have been blessed, blessed, blessed to meet him. He is so competent, skilled, cheerful, and an awesome worker. What a gift!

*** * ***

This quilt will be my 100th quilt–remember it is from Material Obsessions 2:

Don’t mind the wrinkles around the diamonds–it’s just how the quilt is sticking to the flannel–and I have not ironed much as there are so many biased edges. I won’t really iron it until I get the borders on it.

BUT, BUT, I think it really needs one more row. It’s looking way too…SQUARE.

So, I’m picking out fabrics for four more blocks and will “unsew” that bottom row so as to be able to insert the required diamonds.

The diamonds get sewn in on the diagonal lines–with each medallion left unjoined down its center–which is doable…

I think you can see the method of construction on the diagonal lines here.

I was in Alewives quilting in Damariscotta Mills earlier this week and took pictures of the version of this quilt that Rhea Daiute did–the one that drew me to this project in the first place. I loved the way she used a stripe for the inner border:

And I love her BIG, BOLD border. Rhea has the greatest eye for color and pattern. Here’s a close-up of her blocks and that striped border:

I could not find a big, bold border so am going with a quieter one that lets the medallions shine.

*** * ***

I have finished the baby quilts for the Enright family twins that are in the offing in, hopefully, early June. Hopefully as everyone wants them to stay put until early June…

We have our Coastal Quilters’ meeting this Saturday, and I want to “Show and Tell” the baby quilts before mailing them on Monday.

Then it’s on to my niece’s baby daughter, also due in June. I am excited about the fabric that I’ve bought for baby Stevens’ quilt.

Turkey Tracks: Dianne Hire: Master Quilter

Turkey Tracks: January 12, 2014

Dianne Hire: Master Quilter

Yesterday was a miserable, rainy, icy, threatening day.

BUT, the Coastal Quilters met, and many members managed to make it to the meeting–where we were treated to a history of Dianne Hire’s gorgeous quilts and books, and the story of her latest book, “APP is for Appliqué.”

Really, we all felt as if in the middle of this challenging day we were basking in so much warmth. Dianne’s gracious humor, her own color-drenched and amazing quilts, the quilts of so many local quilters made from Dianne’s new patterns and brought in to share up close and personal, and our being all together made for a wonderful morning. And by the time we left, the weather had warmed considerably and grass was appearing in the snow paths.

For this new book, her fourth, Dianne drew fourteen complex, amazing patterns, and quilters she knew, many of them local, some of them met while she taught around the country, each took a signature pattern for their personal quilt–which would be included in the planned and approved book. The quilters could also use the other patterns in their quilts. And if you know quilting and quilters at all, you can begin to imagine the diversity these quilts represent. No two are even remotely alike, and all are astonishing!

Here is a quote from Stevie Kumble, Coastal Quilter’s press person, describing the new book in our press release:

The book itself has received acclaim from the quilting world and beyond. According to one reviewer, “The result is a nicely disguised technical manual as a feast for the eyes and an exciting project book. Fourteen stylized floral pattern designs provide the reader with the right place to embark on a unique journey of creativity. Tips and techniques from each contributing quilter will advance the reader’s sewing expertise in multiple ways. This book will either set appliqué design on its ear, advance it for the ages, or both.”

Dianne is famous for her use of color, and she helped pioneer the use of curves, innovative piecing, and so on. Dianne was on the cusp of taking quilts out of the traditional and into the contemporary.

Here is a web site with a lot of her quilts pictured–just scroll down and enjoy: http://dhquiltsandclasses.blogspot.com.

As you perhaps know, I can applique, but I am very drawn to and happy with my ongoing scrappy piecing project and using up my stash. But Dianne swears that these complex designs are not hard to make. The results, I can tell you, are well worth the effort.

The quilts of Coastal Quilter’s members Gail Galloway Nicholson and Roxanne Wells appear in Dianne’s new book.

And, this program was arranged by Gail Galloway Nicholson. Thanks, Gail!

And Dianne’s information is as follows:

Dianne S. Hire

One Hundred Bayside Road, Northport, Maine 04849

207-338-4789

email: alternatives2@bluestreakme.com

Turkey Tracks: Jo Diggs Visits Coastal Quilters

Turkey Tracks: November 14, 2013

Jo Diggs Visits Coastal Quilters

Jo Diggs, of Portland, Maine, visited Coastal Quilters for our November 9th meeting.

We are so lucky to have so many nationally recognized quilters here in Maine, and Jo Diggs is a bright star among that number. To top it off, Jo is funny, clever, gracious–a lovely, lovely lady.

Here she is (grey sweater) talking to our members after her trunk show.

I took LOTS of pictures. But my little camera just didn’t do justice to her work. So, I’ve posted a link to her blog where you can enjoy really good pictures of her work. So, take a minute and take yourself on a little art outing. Jo’s work is applique, and she does large and small art pieces–though in the future, she says, she is going to concentrate on large pieces.

Gallery.

ENJOY!

Turkey Tracks: Friendship Samplers Quilt Show, Belfast, Maine

Turkey Tracks: November 1, 2013

Friendship Samplers Quilt Show

Belfast, Maine

Friendship Samplers is the Pine Tree Quilting Guild chapter located to Camden’s north, in Belfast, Maine.

(We are the Coastal Quilters here in Camden.)

The Friendship Samplers quilters are strong, competent, wonderful quilters. There is just so much talent in that group.

They do a quilt show every other year, and this year was the year.

And this year, their show was as wonderful as ever.

I did not begin to take pictures of everything–or even of some of the most amazing quilts–and there were many. I took pictures of work that stimulated my own creativity. And do remember that the quilts I love best are scrappy quilts that are functional.

First, my most favorite quilt was my friend Joan Herrick’s “Logs and Ladders”–where she has combined a log cabin block with a Jacob’s Ladder block–and took advantage of their strong directional orientations. There’s one of these in my future!

I was intrigued by the quilting in this quilt–and later realized it’s called “McTavishing,” after Karen McTavish, who invented it. You can see how to do it on Leah Day’s web site, along with at least 400 other free-motion quilting designs she has put onto utube videos.

Don’t you love this modern “take” on the log cabin block?

I love the work of Alice Parsons. And she had a hand in this quilt below:

It’s stitched with bright orange thread in squiggly lines up and down the quilt. And look at the use of purple for the sashing. That purple is making the yellow leap out of the quilt!

Look at how the center square is varied–and the use of the adorable funky bird–and the use of rows of the squares…

I want to make a quilt with birds at the center of some kind of block. And I love what these quilters have done here. It’s just so much fun!

Here’s another creative idea for making use of a central square with something (birds!) fussy cut inside it. Surround the square with flying geese and corner blocks:

The flying geese and their backgrounds can vary in color choice. What’s uniting the quilt here is the sashing/border fabric–in this case black and white and the use of the center square with a border around it.

The Friendship Samplers always have a “quilt alley” where you buy chances (25 for $2!!!) and put your chances in the can/s of the quilt/s number you like.

All these quilts were to be “won” on Friday. Another set went up on Saturday.

I found many little quilts I liked on this wall. But this one was my favorite:

Here’s a close-up of the blocks:

The Friendship Samplers always have goodies to eat–and they COVER FOOD TABLES WITH QUILTS–which fascinated Giovann McCarthy–on her first outing to a Frienship Samplers Quilt Show:

I really loved some of these “table cloth” quilts. I cringed at using a quilt for a table cloth, but their use does remind one that quilts are made to be used and loved:

Here’s a close-up of a table cloth quilt. I’ve never found a squared square form that I didn’t like:

Here’s a close-up:

I was most intrigued with this pattern as well:

Here below you can see the two blocks that make the pattern together: 4 half-square triangles with the colors to the inside making a square AND a sixteen patch with four red blocks making the center. I’d cut the block to combine two of the white squares into a rectangle though

This quilt was HAND STITCHED!!!

Imagine it made in any number of colors–as long as you keep the light and dark values: blue, yellow, orange, brown, etc.

SO, our group really enjoyed the Friendship Samplers Quilt Show 2013 and look forward to attending in 2015!

Thanks Friendship Samplers!

After the show we had lunch at Chase’s Daily–which specializes in local foods mostly from (in season) their farm. And we visited Nancy’s Quilt Shop on Route 3 just outside Belfast to pick up more of a fabric that two of our quilters wanted to buy more of than Nancy had at the show.

Turkey Tracks: September Update

Turkey Tracks: September 22, 2014

September Update

Late August and ALL of September are really busy months for me in Maine.

First of all, son Bryan often comes for his birthday, which is September 11th. Bryan and Corinne like to come visiting in the early fall as most of the tourists have gone home or are taking a breather before the fall foliage gets rolling. And, it’s cooler.

Second, in Maine, September is the red month (tomatoes), not July, as is true for regions south of us. Plus, the gardens are cranking out food at alarming rates. So I am busy blanching, roasting, drying, lacto-fermenting, and generally reveling in all the bounty of our earth in Maine.

Third, MOFGA, the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association fair happens in the third weekend of September. This fair, also known as the Common Ground Fair, is one of my most favorite things to attend all year.

Fourth, Coastal Quilters starts its new year in September. I agreed to be President this year, so I’ve had a fair amount of organizing and reviewing to do to get back up to speed. We had a terrific organizational meeting September 14th, and we’ll have a really good year this year I think.

Fifth, I start the process of putting the yard to bed for the winter. The flower pots are played out. The wind chimes have to be taken down. The hummers are gone. The porch furniture and kayaks have to be stored. The chickens have to be winterized. And, the garden put to bed with the new garlic planted for next year. I have LOVED having that garden fenced all this summer–especially since I never was able to keep the hens I have now inside their pen.

So….I will do some separate entries on some of these events. But I will leave you with some fun pictures taken more or less in late August/early September.

Susan McBride of Golden Brook Farm grew these awesome cherry tomatoes. I experimented with drying these to see which ones were the best. Hands down, the purple heritage cherry tomato was. They are like eating candy–and I know I will enjoy having them on hand all winter when the snow is flying. That bag of highly colored bits is corn from Margaret Rauenhorst and Ronald VanHeeswijk. I’m going to grind it and make cornbread with it any day now.

I planted random squash seeds in the blue tubs this year. One is growing a Hubbard Squash–which delights me so much. I will go ahead and collect the squashes as soon as it stops raining and put them into the garage to “sugar off” for a bit. They do better when they have a bit of time to cure. The Blue Hubbard squash can get HUGE–and is a really great all-purpose squash. It’s delicious to eat and makes great “squash” pie too.

Here is a typical Hope’s Edge pick-up day–with Giovanna McCarthy. We have sacks of food and flowers!

I found this picture on John’s computer before we retired it. It’s one of my very favorites. He really had such a great eye for a good picture. LIkely I’ll make some cards from this picture…

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

The basket got filled with half-square triangle pieces:

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.

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.

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