Tag: Red Pepper Quilts

Turkey Tracks: “Parts Department Party” Quilt

Turkey Tracks:  May 28, 2019

“Parts Department Party” Quilt

It’s done!

And I really love it…

To refresh your memories, as I’ve been posting about this project for some time now, about four summers ago, Becca Babb-Brott, Linda Satkowski, and I decided to spend some of the summer “playing” with blocks and making enough to share with each other.  We all threw the blocks we made and that were given to us by each other into a bin we each called “the parts department”—following the work of Freddie Moran and Gwen Marston, who pioneered the idea of making fun blocks that would be ready to use when needed.

Both Becca and Linda put together their “improv” parts department quilts this year, so I knew the pressure was on.  It took me a long time to get this quilt together because I had lots and lots of “parts” that needed to be sewn into something useful—like the black/pink stars in the border (made from bonus triangles from a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt one year) or the broken dishes blocks in the border, or the flying geese formations, and so on.  And on, and on, and on…   I had a LOT of “parts”—too many to work all of them into this quilt, which is actually pretty large.  You know what that means…  There will be more play with fun blocks and another improv quilt down the road.

I really like the Carrie Bloomston “newsprint” 108-wide backing and the striped border—an idea I’ve seen used often on the Red Pepper Quilts blog.  And I quilted with Anne Bright’s Simple Feathers pantograph, which I like and use a lot.  I just wanted to lay down an overall curvy pattern.

Here are pics of parts of this quilt—which contains so many memories of parts of other quilts, of gift blocks from Becca and Linda, and of fabrics I’ve used and loved:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turkey Tracks: Becca’s Kitty and Becca’s First Longarm Quilt

Turkey Tracks:  December 23, 2016

Becca’s Kitty and Becca’s First Longarm Quilt

Friend Becca has two half-grown black kittens that are hard to tell apart–brother and sister.

They are adorable.

They are coal black, but the female one has a white spot on her chest.  I may have finally learned to tell them apart.

I was over there the other day to admire Becca’s FIRST LONGARM QUILT all finished–she did it here on Lucy the Longarm, and it will be on a bed by now–and the female kitty begged and begged to come into Becca’s Etsy store, Sew Me A Song.  None of the family’s pets are allowed in the Etsy Store and especially not half-grown kittens.

Then we looked up to see this:

Here are some pics of Becca’s quilt–it’s her version of Bonnie Hunter’s “Scrappy Trip Around the World”–which is a free pattern on Bonnie’s web site Quiltville.com.  I LOVE Becca’s fabrics–so fresh and exciting and fun and so NOT like my older traditional ones…  I’m slowly switching over, and that is a totally wonderful journey.

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Becca used a navy and white strip to bind this quilt and quilted free hand with a medium grey thread.  To see more of this kind of binding take a look at Red Pepper Quilts blog.

Here you can see Becca’s backing fabric and how nicely the grey thread is playing on both sides of the quilt AND some of the really fun fabrics Becca uses.  She had fun with this quilt.  She wrote names into it, made hearts, made all kinds of squiggles, and just played.

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Here’s a pic of the “trip” pattern–which is really, really fun to make.  The blocks, when put together, start forming diamonds.

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Here’s my “trip” quilt from a few years back.  It’s the difference of night and day:

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I love mine–all made from 2 1/2-inch strip sets precut from other quilts and put into bins.  Each fabric reminds me of a quilt I made for someone.  And this quilt gets used every day.  BUT, I love Becca’s fabrics more.  Change is always good, and this change is providing me with loads of new joys–which include learning new things.

Turkey Tracks: May is Makers’ Month

Turkey Tracks:  My 17, 2016

May is Makers’ Month

 

You know all those terrific patterns out there in the quilting world?

They were designed by someone who, likely, has a home business.

In May, we can support them by buying some of their patterns.  Or, their fabrics.

I bought this pattern:  a low-volume quilt design by Rita Hodge of Red Pepper Quilts.

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AND, it’s gonna look great made with the low-volume fat quarter fabrics I’ll be getting each month from Alewives Quilting in Damariscotta Mills, Maine.