Nancy's Rail Fence Pinwheels

Nancy has made a quilt for another grand-niece.  She pieces these wonderfully bright quilts--this one was a rail fence pattern.

Nancy controlled where she placed the various fabrics from this strip set into blocks of pinks and blues and purples, and then decided that she liked the effect of putting the like blocks together into pinwheels.

 Quilted with hearts and loops.

 and a luscious purple minkee on the back...

Heritage Park Quilt Show--Calgary Longarm Quilters

We are blessed with a very neat quilt show here in Calgary, at Heritage Park, our outdoor museum.  They display (no judging) a lot of quilts--last month somewhere between 600-800 all over the park, in the buildings, on the buildings, on tripods on the lawns, under tents...quilts everywhere.

There are great vendor tents as well.

The Calgary Longarm Quilters decided to enter a group entry this year, 14 longarm quilters decided to take part.  There were 16 quilts completed that were all 64x80, using the Avignon Picnic pattern (we extended the pattern by one row).  Fabrics and quilting of each longarmers choice. 

It was really neat to see them all together, and how different the same pattern could be.

 The were under a tent, and had lots of little bugs on them...I was told they were little dragonflies, although I didn't examine them too closely :)

 This is Joanne Middleton's Hawaiian Picnic

Above is  Lorraine Appleby's Tequila Sunrise


And below Colleen Hunter's Taylor's Quilt.  The Calgary in the name of our group is not too strict...Colleen lives about 1 1/2 hrs north of Calgary.

Below is  Janet Madeyski's quilt, I didn't get the name of it.  I like looking at it, because she used some of the designs I had considered and drew out for my son to choose from, so now I can see how they also look great.

 

Carol Weland's Courage and Character.  A lovely edge to edge design.

 Janet Madeyski had two quilts displayed...I liked seeing Rainbow Chains also, because I had considered a  multicoloured but controlled quilt as well.  I had also considered quilting the chains with just straight lines...I think Janet and I must have similar tastes. 

And those black dots you can see on Janet's and Jo's quilts are the little bugs I was talking about earlier.

 And Jo Glasswick turned her quilt so her chains ran vertically, which was something I only thought of after my quilt was made.  She quilted wonderful feathers.

The next quilt is Nancy Basserman's Hodgepodge.  Nancy said she had a lot of fun quilting this one, and it shows.  She quilted so many different things on this quilt.

Chris Tessier's A Walk Around the Block

Donna Leuw's Black and White and Red. I love this colour combination. It's hard to tell in the photo, Donna used an edge to edge graphic design.

 Bev Rinehart's Picnic Critters.   I had thought she had posted pictures on her blog, but I cannot find them today...she's got dragonflies and such scattered throughout her quilt.  I'm hoping she does put up some closeups on her blog (Hint Hint Bev)

Andrea Harris's Avignon Picnic.  Andrea is the original pattern designer.  It was nice to use a Calgary designer's quilt pattern.  Andrea had a lot of fun quilting this one too, lots of designs, and she left the colored blocks unquilted, just stitching in the ditch around them.   Andrea has more pictures on her Urban Quiltworks blog and more pictures of the Heritage Park display as well here

 And I have a picture of Andrea's, Bev's and my quilt together...

Charmaine Walker's A Touch of Gold.  Swirls, pebbles, diamonds and a leafy vine!

Jane Goddard's Love is in the Air.  Jane used a pantograph called Modern Maze #1.  It looks great on this quilt!

 Joanne Middleton also had two quits displayed in this group entry (she had many more around the park as well).  This one has marvelous flowers all over it, and then some fills between the flowers.  Yummy texture on this one.

 And Mine, which you may have already seen on my blog...if you missed it, the post is  Picnic in the Rockies

Picnic in the Rockies

This pattern is Avignon Picnic by Andrea Harris, which is a jelly roll quilt, but I didn't want a scrappy looking quilt and this quilt is for my sons bed...so I played with it on EQ7 and decided to go with solids.  Which resulted in a masculine quilt and lots of yummy space for quilting.

 prequilting:

and, like it's hard to find a masculine jelly roll, its hard to find a masculine wide backing--most seem to have floral or scrolls--so I pieced a backing using solids....which turned out very nicely.  The backing is really the medium taupe color from the top...but it's washed out in this photo

QD wool batting.  So Fine and Bottom line threads.

Simplicity

This quilt pattern is called Simplicity and it's a strip tube pattern, using 2 1/2" strips.  This is a quilt we made for our church.

The pattern goes together nicely, my friend and I got all the blocks made in less than a day, she sewed while I cut and pressed. 

When harvesting, my family (well, I'm pretty sure it was my one Uncle who came up with this) had the saying  "Keep your TITS Up"  which meant keep your Time In The Swath up, basically, do whatever it takes and provide support to keep that combine running.  I think it applies just as well to quilting, but you need to keep your Time In The Seam up....so I was doing what I could to keep the sewing machine busy. 

Her husband came in just when we got to the point where I was done all the cutting and waiting for her to sew the blocks so I could do a final press, and he enquired as to why I was there, what was I doing (other than talking), but it was all in fun.

 I had some fun quilting this one, and wound up with a nice secondary design, as seen in the square below.

This is an actual block here:

I randomly inserted a loop into some feathers, as learned in the class I took from Judi Madsen.

And the back is a very yummy black minkee, which shows the quilting so nicely, but doesn't photograph well in terms of color..

 From the back, you really have to look to see the actual block shapes, it looks like smaller blocks set on point. 

 Some fluff on this photo, until it's bound, its hard to keep all the batting fluff off of the quilt.  You can also see some of the sheen from the magnifico and glide threads.

I guess I never got a finished photo.  The quilt has gone to its new home now, it's owner was very pleased with it.