Friday, March 27, 2009

The Wonders of Rick Rack

A little while ago, our quilt guild ran a bus trip to NYC. The plan was to go to the garment district and The Americna Folk Art Museum. We used Paula Nadelstern's website, http://www.paulanadelstern.com/, for our shopping plan. We pretty much stuck with her abbreviated 3 hour version and walked our feet off. With side trips to the folk art museum, The City Quilter (http://www.cityquilter.com/), lunch and Magnolia Bakery for cupcakes (http://www.magnoliacupcakes.com/), featured on Sex And The City, our day was packed.

Our favorite stop was Daytona Trims (http://www.daytonatrim.com/) on 39th St. Kelly Meanix, queen of rick rack turned us (Christine Kamon and me) on to this wonderful and fun trim. Daytona had yards and yards and yards of rick rack in teeny tiny widths to giant widths in every single color you could think of. You would tell the store employee which one and how much you wanted and they would measure it right off the spool, cut it and stuff it in a plastic bag and record the price on the outside of the bag. It was intoxicating - 5yds/$1, 3yds/$1, up to $2/yd. We bought an assortment of colrs and sizes. We were giddy with joy! (I know, we need a real life.) Between the 3 of us, we sepnt over $150 on this old - but new to us - embellishment.

Our brains were working a mile a minute. Where could we use our new discovery and did we buy enough? Oh there's always mail order, if we run out! The wonderful thing about this rick rack is that it's cotton. It's got a nice soft feel to it. And it's behavior is bias-like. It curves nicely. Check out the swirls you can make. I can't wait until I can find the time to try it with other circular/wavey applications I have used it in a quilt that I am working on. And guess what? I did run out. And I had to call Daytona Trims to send me more. This is a block of the quilt called "Bubblegum Kisses".
Christine had a ball using many of the colors she bought on a quilt she made. I have posted a cropped image so you can get a feeling for the variety of rick rack she used. The quilt is called "Buttons, Beads and Rick Rack". The rick rack really curves nicely around the circle.
You can buy packaged rick rack at JoAnn's. They do have it in a variety of sizes and colors, but it is polyester and is a little stufffer.

1 comment:

  1. The big question is - is it ric rac or is it rick rack? On the Wright's package it is Rick Rack.

    ReplyDelete

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