Safari Tango

 My last finished quilt of 2020 is called Safari Tango. It might be the first true double-sided quilt I've ever made. The front was started in an online (Zoom) workshop with Diane Harris, The Stash Bandit, hosted by Ninigret Quilters. She calls her pattern Twofer Tango because you could get two quilts from your effort. The half square triangle units are bonus blocks from the creation of the main X-blocks. I chose to add mine around the border instead of harboring yet another UFO!

 

 

The back of the quilt was one of those long-simmering UFOs. Started in a class with Thomas Knauer in 2015, also hosted by Ninigret Quilters, it is a code quilt with the word SAFARI spelled out in Braille and repeated in a loop.

 

Both sides of the quilt used fabric that was purchased by Julia and me in Tanzania in 2014. The background print on the front was a big chunk of fabric from Joann's that came to me from someone else's stash. It is a grass-like print which was perfect since Julia's research project that semester in Tanzania dealt with grasses in the Ngorongoro Crater.

Quilting is all fun and games until you stitch onto a glove. I might have had better luck if I had remembered to drop the feed dogs!

Safari Tango

60" X 86"

Safari started in 2015 

Tango started 10/17/2020

Completed 12/30/2020

Raquette River Oxbow

Blogiversary post 4 of 10

I love this quilt! It depicts the oxbow on the Raquette River in the town of Tupper Lake, NY. My family has been there several times, camping, canoeing, kayaking and visiting the Wild Center. My daughter was an intern there through the summer of 2015. So this spot holds a lot of memories for us.

I couldn't wait to take a class with Timna Tarr to make this map quilt. I used a topographic map from the US Geologic Survey and had it enlarged at my local copy shop. I built my quilt from the river up. Cutting out the yellow layer was intense! What you see below is a layer of heat & bond with the mirror image of the river traced on, then adhered to the back of the yellow batik. I cut out the little ponds first with an x-acto knife.

It was a little unruly. I needed to use a light box with my map under the blue fabric to line up the yellow just right.

I changed color to correspond with the lines on the topo map. The greens were a lot easier to cut!

If you click on this picture, you might see the weird lines and texture from the fusible. Apparently, heat and bond reacts funny with batiks, which I did not know before this project. Next time, I'll try a different brand.

I used Sue Cleveland's 12 weight spaghetti cotton thread in black to quilt a line between each color. I love the way that looks! Then I used matching 50 weight to add echo texture.

We had a discussion in class about legends and scale. Without them, it's not a map, it's just a pretty picture. I had my husband do the math and calculate the scale for me.

The texture looks amazing on the back!

I had to include a flange in the binding. It's a phase I'm going through! To stitch down the binding, I used the 12 wt black thread again. I think it's a cool effect.

The free motion quilting was done on my trusty old Bernina 153.

 

Raquette River Oxbow
33.5" X 23.5"
October 19, 2018- Workshop with Timna Tarr
October 20, 2019- top complete
October 25, 2018- quilting started
October 27, 218- quilt complete

KKB Road Trip

Blogiversary Post 1 of 10

To continue the blogi-versary celebration, I'm planning to post 10 quilts in the next 10 days that I have not yet recorded here. You may have seen them on Instagram.

I'm starting with the quilt that I selected as my favorite finish of 2018:

Wildflower Trio.

This project started with a text from my quilty travel buddy, Sharon. She noticed that Karen Kay Buckley would be teaching in Clifton Park, NY in June of 2018. (The original text may have been in 2017!) It said something like, "Doesn't your sister live in Clifton Park?" Since I'm familiar with the area, we decided a road trip was in order. Contacts were made with the local guild, workshop fees paid, hotel room booked, dinner plans made with my sister, supplies packed, and we were off!

There just happened to be a quilt shop hop happening that week, so we hopped our way from Rhode Island to New York! First stop was  Karen's Quilting Corner in Massachusetts. 

After a sketchy but beautiful drive on backroads through the mountains, we went for a walk around and over Lock E2 on the Erie Canal!

The guild lecture was that night, but I don't have any good pics of the amazing KKB or the lovely quilters of QUILT North who welcomed us so generously.

We had the next day off (as Karen taught machine appliqué) so we did a little more shop hopping and visited the Albany Pine Bush Discovery Center. My daughter had done an internship there as an environmental educator while she was in college. Sharon was very patient with me while I played with my new camera, shooting every blooming wild lupine! 

Sharon spotted the deer far off in the aspen. This is a major zoom!

Finally, it was time to start appliquéing. Karen is a fantastic teacher. If you have the opportunity to take a class with her, do it! She has all the best tools for appliqué, so you'll want all of those, too.

I stitched on and off between other projects and finished the top at the end of September.

I was a little nervous about quilting. I didn't want to ruin all the hard work I had done on the hand appliqué. It's not perfect, but I think it's OK.

I wanted a little color in the binding, so I went crazy and did a beaded binding. I've got another little quilt to blog about where I'll talk more about this technique. Basically, there's a string of plastic pearls stitched into the piping. Every bead has to be stitched around by hand!

The corners are hard, y'all! Buy Bethanne Nemesh's book for the how-to.

The back is nothing to write home about. You can see my adequate machine quilting. Ha!

Can you see why she's my favorite?

Wildflower Trio

Workshop with Karen Kay Buckley

Pattern: Garden Medley by KKB

24" X 21"

Started June 6, 2018

Completed November 16, 2018 

Clarksdale Crossroads

I recently completed a scrap quilt I had been working on for some time. The traditional block is called Arkansas Crossroads. The title of my quilt is Clarskdale Crossroads because it reminds me of a special trip. (We did cross the border into Arkansas, but didn't spend any time there.)

In June of 2016, my husband Bill and I made the pilgrimage to the legendary blues crossroads in Clarskdale, Mississippi. He bought this pretty resonator guitar on his 50th birthday. If you are not schooled in Mississippi Delta Blues, start here with Robert Johnson. 

OK, back to the quilt. I had cut piles and piles of 2.5" squares in early 2016. I started sewing together 4-patches sometime after the big trip. My brain can't handle randomness, so I sorted the squares into warm and cool piles so I could sew a warm to a cool. The alternating white blocks have one warm and one cool triangle.

When I made the stitch and flip units, I had a BIG pile of bonus triangles left over. They are the gift that keeps on giving! I'm still playing with those little cuties.

 The top was done in April 2017 shortly after my daughter's wedding. I was pretty busy after that getting her wedding quilt done, so Crossroads sat for a while, waiting.

I finally quilted it in February of this year. It was easy to decide on a quilting design for the colorful bits. It's a loopy continuous curve in a peachy Superior Sew Fine thread.

It took a while to decide on a design for the white sections. I actually tried something, didn't like it, and picked it out. I settled on a walking foot design. Straight lines first, then gentle curves. I was able to stitch diagonally edge to edge. No threads to bury!

I added a free motion fill only to the diamond shapes around the outside edges. When I went to my stash to look for a binding fabric, I was so excited to find this print that mimics the shape of the quilting design!

I knew I was cutting it close. I really didn't want to cut another full strip of binding fabric to fill that little gap, so I didn't! I reached into my scrap basket and found a bit of blue that matched the Philip Jacobs print on the back. That seemed like the perfect place to insert my label.

Since I had done some marking to guide my walking foot lines, the quilt needed to be rinsed. Imagine my distress when one of the purple prints bled! After the second rinse with color catchers, the purple came clean, but...

one of the reds ran! I was persistent, and was finally able to release all the excess dye by washing in warmer water. I was sweating for a few days there!

Ahh. I love a freshly completed quilt!

Clarksdale Crossroads

64" X 80"

Started July 2016

Top done April 2017

Quilted & bound February 2018

Completed 3/9/18

Ombre Pyramids

 In this episode of Way-Back Wednesday, I present Ombre Pyramids. This is one of my favorite finishes ever, so I'm not sure why it has taken me over a year to blog about it.

After taking a workshop with Vanessa Christenson, I was excited to play with a hoarded jelly roll of her ombre fabrics. I had to supplement the jelly roll with a few extra strips from yardage I had handy.

I had seen Nancy Rink's Prism Quilt design and thought it would be a great fit for the ombres. The top came together really quickly over a couple of days in July. I happened to have a 60 degree ruler in my stash. Where do I get these things?

The project didn't make it to the top of the "quilt it" list until November. Four months is a fairly short ripening time in my world. 

I had fun playing with the idea of combining straight line (walking foot) quilting with free motion.

I'd call this a successful binding estimation. I'd rather have only 1/2" left over than be short by 1/2". 

(We realized I am literally 1/2" too short for the zip-line excursion we want to go on in Alaska this summer. Maybe if I wear my hiking boots and stretch a little, no one will notice!)

To celebrate my new phone, I had a custom cell phone case made by Skinit. I still love it!

(They didn't pay me to say that.)

Ombre Pyramids

35" X 45"

Started: July 1, 2016

Completed: November 19, 2016

Exhibited at the Summer Celebration of Quilts at the New England Quilt Museum, August 2017, representing Narragansett Bay Quilters Association.

Exhibited at Ninigret Quilters show, Westerly, RI, October 13-15, 2017.