Wholecloth Experiment

I've been mulling over an idea about doing a colourful wholecloth using the walking foot quilting technique I learned from Heather Lair, which I've decided to start calling Lair Quilting. I first used it on Heathia, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Heather was an amazing artist, who passed away in 2013. I took a class with her in 2011 in St. Andrews by the Sea, NB. She was very generous with her art quilting knowledge and I haven't seen anyone else do her quilting technique other than me. Now that I use it so much, I've decided to call it Lair Quilting after her. Hope she doesn't mind! :) It also looks quite labyrinthian and that fits with the name too, eh?

Usually when I do Lair quilting (Heathia, We the North Since 1867, Triad), it's using one or two colours and it's meant to blend into the background. This time, I wanted to experiment with making the design with the quilting.

First, I laid down some black guidelines, with a mix of straight lines and circles.

Next I started filling in the spaces between the lines in different colours with my favourite Aurifil colours. 

Adding more colours...can you feel the rainbow yet?

Here it is from the back. Mmm, loving that texture. 

Just as I was finishing up the quilting, I thought it needed a little more. I started adding some hand stitching to define the shapes and make the colours pop more. I used 3 strands of DMC embroidery floss -- it adds a good line of colour, but isn't too heavy. 

Finished up the hand stitching this morning and blocked it. 

Updated: Here is the full view of the blocked quilt. Just the binding and hanging sleeve left to go. Calling this one Blessed. 

I'm getting impatient for this one to be done.

Hope you are having a great weekend! 

TGIFF! - We The North Since 1867

Welcome to TGIFF! I'm definitely doing the Carlton Happy dance with my finish this week. It's why I've been so quiet on the blog; besides our vacation, every spare moment was spent working on this quilt since early July.

I shared the finished We The North Since 1867 top last month. I actually designed this quilt last year, but then struggled with the motivation to start it. Fear is such a little bugger. Once I got started though, the obsession took over. Tea and Buffy the Vampire Slayer kept me company on many a late night.

I made We the North Since 1867 to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary next year.  Yeah, I know I'm a little early to be doing a sesquicentennial quilt, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I love to travel and experience other countries and cultures, but I love coming home too. I feel pretty lucky to be born in this cool country so I wanted to make something to celebrate it.

Don't let the simple design fool you; it has a lot of meaning behind it (at least for me). It has 13 values of red (mostly Konas) for the 10 provinces and three territories.

When we typically talk about Canadian culture, we often use the term 'mosaic' to describe all the nationalities that now call this place home. I wanted the central maple leaf to convey that idea as well, but I wanted more of a glass-like feel to it to remind us that it is fragile if we are not careful.

I machine appliquéd 1867, the year of Confederation, to the lower right of the maple leaf.

For the quilting, I used two colours of Aurifil thread (Red 50 wt. 2260 and Charcoal 50 wt. 2630), representing our two official languages. The quilting is the walking foot technique that I learned from Heather Lair. The spacing is 5/8" between the lines. Done on my Bernina domestic machine, the quilting alone took about 30 hours. Yes, totally crazy, but worth it.

I outlined the central maple leaf with some hand stitching and included some hand stitched partial maple leaf 'watermarks' in the background.

I also hand stitched one small red maple leaf in the upper right to represent our 'little' country in 1867 (only 4 provinces and 3.4 million people at the time).

We the North Since 1867 is done and it turned out just as I had hoped. Bliss.

For those who like to see under the covers, here's the back (it's really hard to photograph red):

Size: 34.5" x 44"

I know I say this a lot, but this is now my favourite quilt. Sorry, Happy Canada Day, Eh! I still adore you too though.

An InLinkz Link-up

TGIFF! - Codex

Welcome to TGIFF! It's been a crappy week in the Quilt Matters household so I'm especially glad that it's just about done and I can celebrate something positive. :)

This quilt began as part of two challenges for our local Modern Quilt Guild -- the Block Design Challenge and the Montreal Meetup/Modern Design Challenge. Running out of time but wanting to participate in both challenges, I shamelessly combined the two. ;)

More than most of my quilts, this was a therapy quilt. To me, the lines in it feel strong and hard and powerful -- the opposite to how raw I'm feeling these days. It's not a sweet or joyful quilt. Funny weird (not funny ha ha) how my other 'therapy' quilt Innocence Lost, Courage Found uses the same colours. Sensing a theme...or dare I say series?

As I mentioned in my last post about this quilt, the design feels like it's a code of some sort so I added hand stitching with some embroidery floss in spots to mimic morse code. The machine quilting, done with a 50 wt Aurifil 2460 using a walking foot, adds a crop circle effect, which we all know is a code from aliens from outer space. ;) The quilting is controlled and precise -- again in juxtaposition with how chaotic my life is feeling right now.

One problem I had with this quilt is bearding. Bearding is when the batting comes through the pores of the fabric. I think I may have put the batting on backwards. Oops. I've been using tape and clothing rollers to remove the lint, but as you can see, there's still some bits and bobs here and there. Hopefully it will settle over time and not get worse.

Finished size: 33" by 40".

Did you hear that Sew Sisters Quilt Shop is having a Mother's Day Sale? 20% off yardage on May 10. Who needs flowers or chocolates when you can receive fabric?!

An InLinkz Link-up

It Seemed Like Such A Good Idea At The Time

The hand stitching, I mean. At first it was just going to go here and there, but then I liked it a lot. So I decided to do it for all the pieces. And then machine quilt ~ 1/8" apart. Yeah. That's a lot of hand stitching AND a lot of machine quilting...for a project that I'm hoping to have finished for TGIFF!, which I'm hosting this week.

Even though I'm cursing my decision because of the lack of time, I'm loving the mix of the hand stitching combined with the machine quilting. Will I get it done for Thursday night? Any wagers?