Wednesday, May 27, 2015

17th Annual Quilt Show





The Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilters' Guild held it's annual quilt show again this year at the Museum of Northern History.

The show is traditionally on display for the month of May with the Open House held on Mother's Day.

All quilts in the show have not previously been shown in this show.

An "Airing of the Quilts" is on display on the museum's grounds during the Open House.  These can be any quilts that have been in previous shows, old quilts, anything goes.

Here are some of the quilts from the show:














Lots of goodies at the Open House:


Airing of the Quilts

It was a beautiful day but our snow had just left us, so the grounds had not been groomed yet.




And on  the veranda of the Sir Harry Oakes Chateau which now hosts our local museum:


Happy Quilting,

Terry

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Canada, It's Provinces and Territories - The Blocks


I blogged about this quilt in my previous post, and this blog is all about the front and back of each block from Canada, It's Provinces and Territories.


Canada, It's Provinces and Territories
There is a lot of free motion quilting in this quilt (done on a domestic machine) and I have to say, it is my favourite part of making a quilt.

The inspiration for a lot of the quilting patterns are Leah Day designs.  Check out her 400+ designs at The Free Motion Quilting Project.

I made a few changes to the original patterns, added some 3-D elements to some blocks, and a few others as noted below.

Yukon
Yukon - back
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island - back
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia


Nova Scotia  - detail

Québec
I believe this pattern represents the weaving industry of Québec, the original was pieced, I decided to weave my strips instead. 

Québec - back
Ontario
Ontario back
Alberta
This was originally an 8" block which I changed to a 12" block so it may look slightly different.

Alberta - back
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan - back
Saskatchewan - detail
British Columbia
The pattern for this block was originally one fish on a rectangular block, I added the second fish to fill in the 12" block.

British Columbia
British Columbia - detail
Manitoba

Manitoba - back



Newfoundland
Newfoundland

New Brunswick
New Brunswick - back

Northwest Territories and Nunavit



Northwest Territories and Nunavit
Canada, It's Provinces and Territories - back
Linking to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday and The Needle and Thread Network.


Happy Quilting,

Terry

Friday, May 8, 2015

Canada, Its Provinces and Territories


A couple of months ago, I asked if anyone recognized any of the blocks on this post.


Canada, It's Provinces and Territories

The reason I asked was because all the blocks in this quilt were designed by Canadian quilters from across Canada to represent their provinces or territories.

The patterns were printed in The Canadian Quilter throughout year 2000 as a Millenium project.

I was interested to see if anyone reading might have made these blocks wayyyyyyy back then.

Canada, It's Provinces and Territories - back

My personal challenge was to use only my own hand dyed fabrics and to add grey to each block. The only commercial fabrics are the solid black and the black and white stripe onto which I stitched the name of the provinces and territories in white. It's a little hard to read,  I wanted the names on the quilt but I did not want them to stand out.

This was a guild project initiated by one of our members, Helen B. who would distribute patterns only to members who had completed their previous month's block.  All the blocks were made while participating in this challenge but then it took many attempts (and 13/14 years) to complete.

I quilted the "boxes" to look like wood grain.

wood grain pattern
The grey border was free motion quilted in a grid (the opposite black border was quilted with diagonal lines)

Bottom left border
being blocked


being blocked
I use my display wall to block my quilts.  I have four panels of foam insulation that I covered with flannel (one side beige - one side white).  The panels are 24" wide, so I place as many as I need on my tables, in this case I only needed three.

This quilt measures 66" x 75".




The label was not sewed on when I took the picture of the back.  I placed it at the bottom of the grey strip.

label
Next post, I'll show close-ups of all the block, front and back.

Thanks for stopping by.



Happy Quilting,

Terry