Quilt Canada Memories

Quilt Canada came to a close in Halifax last week and it reminded me of a road trip that six of us took to Toronto in 2000 when it was held at York University. It was a great adventure with lots of wonderful work to admire. I particularly remember the precision of the miniature quilts - they were true works of art.

It was at this show that Betty fell in love with a fabric collection - I'm not even sure who it was by, maybe Moda. She debated long and hard because she had a young family and wasn't sure that she could splurge on fabric, but eventually she was convinced so she went and bought it. She wasn't sure what pattern she was going to make but the longer she thought the more she realized that she needed a second bundle of fabric, so back she went. All told, she went back three times to the booth for fabric to be certain that she had enough.

The Mary Englebright quilt

And this was the result of her efforts. Isn't it beautiful?

Mom made the same pattern but had gone totally scrappy with lots of bright, primary prints and a different border. They found the pattern in a print quilt mag of one sort or another and for some reason I think this was one by Mary Englebright.

It is all stitched by hand and also hand quilted.















And it is fast becoming everyone's favourite!

Mom's has just come back from the quilter so I'll share that with you next time. It is amazing how different the same pattern looks so different depending on the colour palette....M

It's Baaack!

It's been well over a month now that my machine was in the shop but its back home now, and, while I have been enjoying my hand stitching, it will be nice to tackle a few projects that I've been wanting to do. One small glitch - the knob that drops the feed dogs was stuck and was not fixed so I was a bit bummed out because I've been wanting to try my hand at free motion quilting on a small project or two. I was prepared to live with it as is though because I didn't want to put things on hold any longer when I had a brain wave. I got out the WD-40, spritzed it a few times, waited a bit, and ta da...we're in business. Gotta say I'm pretty pleased with myself on that one!

Anyway, I've been cutting more blocks for my Flying Geese quilt so that's what I sat down to. My machine is purring like a kitten now so I cruised through several dozen geese in fairly short order (that almost doesn't sound right), and now that I have the swing of things with the Lazy Girl ruler I'm quite enjoying the process.

I still have more trimming to do, but the piles are adding up, which made me pretty happy. Then I made the mistake of looking at the instructions and realized that I need at least 920 geese, 460 in each colour, so I'll be at this for a little while yet!










Recently I found a few more fat quarters to add to the mix - sooo lovely. I might need one or two more greens but I'll cut what I have for now and see where I end up.











I managed to find 4.5 yards of the backing that I want to use in an online shop but it's not going to be quite enough for a queen sized quilt so I need to do some thinking about how to piece the back - me thinks that I'll be making more than 920 geese. This is showing up a bit duller than it really is, probably because the photo was taken in the bat cave, aka my sewing room....M

More Fabulous Eye Candy

Here's a second installment of photos that I took at the quilt show on the weekend for you to enjoy.












A few of the quilts this time around were embroidered and the photo on the left was the centre panel from one that was hanging behind a quilt appraiser in her booth; it had a very Jacobean feel to it.











This is a border detail from the same quilt...





Then there was this delicate cross stitched quilt; it has been ages since I have seen a cross stitched quilt. Which reminds me...I started a blue cross stitch years ago, I think that it was a Mary Maxim kit, but have no memory of ever finishing it. I wonder where on earth it ended up? This one was also so nicely hand quilted, which was nice to see  as so many seem to be machine quilted.








This Pickle Dish was a real stunner and reminiscent of the amazing show, Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red & White Quilts that was held in New York City last spring. Oh how I wish I could have seen that.










An Amish colour palette worked beautifully on this pattern - not sure what the name of it is but it looks to be a Mariner's Star of one sort or another. The fabrics appear to be solids but if you look closely many are prints.

Here's  a snippet from another two-colour quilt, but done in prints, by Betty's friend Donna Steele. Have I mentioned that I love blue & white quilts (Dawn?)? Donna works in a local quilt shop and last year, out of the blue, gave me this wonderful, huge, bag of scraps from the samples she made for the shop. What a treat!

While this is one that I wouldn't necessarily make myself, it was beautifully done. It's called Vintage Valentine and the applique on it was perfection. Somebody put a lot of love into it.

Here's a closer look:






















A cozy Log Cabin with a bit of a twist for the centre of the blocks.

And of course, a little whimsy. Check out her little 'I love quilting' button!

This is just a small fraction of what we saw but it will give you a sense of the wonderful variety that was there. Lots of fun....M

Quilt Show Eye Candy

Yesterday Betty and I went to Petawawa to browse the Pembroke Log Cabin Quilters Guild show, so lots of eye candy for you today. There are so many really creative women in this Valley and that was very evident as we walked the aisles.

Something that I think was new this year (they have a show every 2 years) was a corner that showed off the work of teens and pre-teens, which was truly inspirational. The future of quilting is in good hands by the looks of their projects. They also had a table set up where children could get a hands-on introduction to the craft and there was lots of interest by both boys and girls; unfortunately, I didn't have the where withall to snap a photo or two of them hard at work.






One of the first quilts we came across was a truly great scrappy quilt with the stars reversed out in white. If you looked closely at the fabrics it was everything from soup to nuts but it worked, big time:

This one was really lovely - the photos don't do it justice:

You can never go wrong with a nine-patch, in my books:

This one was truly spectacular. It was the backdrop for one of the vendor booths and was beautifully done - apparently it took 2 years to make. Had this been me, it would still be in my work basket...

And speaking of spectacular, this one was SO gorgeous - all of my favourite colours. It turns out to be made by a long time friend of mom's, Jill Schooley. It is a smaller quilt, about 4' x 3' and looked stunning on the wall; it is machine quilted.

More tomorrow....M