Birthday giveaway!

In celebration of my  birthday today, I'm giving away this package of Heaven on Earth fabric by Northcott. I bought it for a challenge last year, and now I'm offering a chance to win it to anyone who leaves a comment on this blog posting. The bottom print is 12 inches width of fabric, and the salmon and the green are both 6 inches wof. Enough for several blocks, or a doll quilt, or maybe a little preemie quilt. I'll make a random draw on Friday, June 6. Have a great day. I certainly intend to!

Life is a field trip

This is what happens when the 14-year-old son needs to be artistic within 48 hours -- he asks his mom for help and we make art from fabric. And he did most of the work -- dear old mom only ironed, and helped him with hiding thread knots. This portrait of Gandhi was rendered with the help of some scrap batiks from the wedding quilt and fusible web. He sandwiched it pillowcase style, and then quilted in black around each batik piece. He was quite thrilled with himself, and I had fun watching him concentrate on the quilting stitches
Here is the progress on my Life is a Field Trip throw for the best elementary school teacher in the world. Well, she ought to be pretty darn good if I'm going to spend months making a quilt. I'm liking the project, but between the bamboo batting and the flannel backing it has been a beast to quilt. I've been switching between quilting with pearl (is it perle?) cotton with a chenille needle, which keeps breaking (star above) and quilting with regular quilting thread and a tiny, little quilting needle (below.)


Both are difficult, but I've only got three stars left, and the border. School here in Canada ends June 27, so I have a month left, but I don't want to sit under this warm quilt stitching it for too much longer.
These are the top words. I'll post the whole project when it is bound.

A quilted wedding

Indulge me for a bit. This is what happens when a quilter is asked to decorate for a wedding.

Yesterday was my cousin's C's wedding to M. Here they are after the ceremony wrapped up in the quilt we made them. They hadn't seen it before, and they loved it. Here's a scene from the set-up for the ceremony. the candle and signing table, decorated with antique linens and a square made from quilt scraps.
The quilt and the lecturn. I made this table or dresser runner out of leftover batik strips and attached it to the lecturn. a closer view.
The whole stage. You can just barely see the grand piano behind the quilt, which is great, since it wasn't being used, so we thought we'd get the focus away from it.

Ebb and Flow

For the past six months, this has been a secret, but the big reveal is coming up on the weekend. My cousin C. is getting married next Saturday, and when she announced her engagement in November, we decided to make a quilt. Actually, the "we" was me wondering if we could make a family quilt, and the two sisters below, my mother at the right, and my aunt beside her, who did most of the work. We were hoping to get other family members in on the hand quilting, since the wedding was planned for Nov. 2008, but when she changed the date to May, we revised our plans. Here's the huge quilt hanging at the Barnswallows show a week ago, where it got much attention. It's for a king-sized bed, so our quilters decided on big blocks of 10 inches. We've featured two purple-green-blue batiks in each block, with yellow unifying the quilt. There's at least a dozen different batiks in the quilt, with both of the women above digging into their stash, and yardage only purchased for the yellow and the back. It was beautifully machine quilted by Jacquie Pohl as you can see below.
In the end, my two quiltmaking partners were so quick I was more creative advisor than anything else, although I did work on the label and a few blocks. These two women (the famous quilting aunts, as C. says) are known for their fine hand quilting and applique skills, but as you can see, they've also got a great sense of colour. C. has asked for this to be part of the wedding display, and with the attendants wearing navy and the junior bridesmaids in lilac, it will be a wonderful addition.

More quilt show treats

Here's the other place where my quilt was hanging beside Joyce's work. Mine is the be and bee quilt on the bottom left, and hers is the larger one on the right. Scroll down two posts to see the other two that found themselves together at the Barnswallow's show last weekend. My son David posed with me beside his class string river quilt, lower right. This is made by 25 children in grades four, five and six, with my help. Notice David is a well-trained quilt show enthusiast, wearing his white glove. This show was the 20th annual by the Barnswallows, and David has been to almost half of them, and had his class quilts exhibited at three or four shows. He's an old pro at quilt shows at only age 11 (yes, he's tall for his age.)

Hand dyed Eye Candy

This is my mother's tile quilt which also hung at the Barnswallows show this weekend. She's a dyer, and showcased her fabrics and fine piecing skills with this quilt. Take a look at those quarter inch coloured squares at the intersections.
Here's the whole thing. The funny thing is this is the third show for this quilt, but the first time its been hung. The other two venues only showed it folded on a table, so she was determined to have it hung in all its glory this year, and I got great photos as a result.

Two Tonya fans side by side

I just got back from the Barnswallows Quilt Show in Morden, MB, and these two letter quilts were hanging side by side. It's a long way from Paris to Manitoba, but thanks to Tonya's blog, two Manitobans had the same inspiration for making letters. On the left is my genealogy quilt, and on the right is Joyce's Good Morning quilt. Another of my quilts was hanging beside hers in another part of the show.

This was a surprise, but not much. I knew Joyce lived near Morden, and I also knew we were likely to be the only ones with lettering in small quilts, and then there's just the pragmatic serendipity of how the space works out. Those of you who hang shows now how much of a puzzle it is. But it was fun, and I think both quilts got more attention because they were side by side. And as you can see from the comments, we did get to meet and chat for a bit.