Today We Celebrate - Fêtons 150

Happy Birthday Canada!

Northcott's Map of Canada

Today is our 150th and Canadians are celebrating across Canada.

In Ottawa it's going to be crazy busy. I hope to celebrate quietly at home with my sewing machine :-)


I'm very happy to share with you the finished version of my Canada 150 Art Quilt.

Canada 150 Art Quilt

A lovely maple leaf with a sheer overlay
and paper snowflakes encased within.

This quilt was a great opportunity to practice many of the techniques that I learned at Hillary Rice's embellishment workshop. In my progress post of June 11th (see Related Links), I mentioned some of the techniques that I used on this piece.

appliquéing

sheer overlay

encasement

free motion embroidery

couching

free motioned appliquéd

Since my last post, I added to the free motion embroidery of the northern lights and then free motion quilted the entire piece.

English Paper Pieced Diamond Shapes
into a Flag with a Metal Appliqué Leaf

Metal Appliqué

I used some of the metal that I had softened with a blow torch and cut and shaped it into a maple leaf with 150 inscribed in the middle.

I did some beading along the printed fabric insert using Hillary's bead trail technique. Essentially you bead on top of a quilted line so that your beads are nestled in place and don't wobble. You can also adjust your stitch length and then follow the stitches to get uniform spacing between beads. I didn't follow the stitches, but beading over a quilting line is great since I didn't have to struggle to keep the line straight.

I also appliquéd a feather near the right bottom corner. Over it I attached a feather charm. I added this to pay homage to our First Nation people who were here long before us.

I decided to try some new finishing techniques for this quilt. First I finished the quilt using the pillow case method. Then instead of a sleeve I used triangles quilt hanging sleeve. I found a great tutorial on YouTube (see Related Links).

Details of the bottom of the art quilt

Sesquicentennial Quilts of Valour Challenge Results

In the Countdown to Canada - Fêtons 150! post I had pictures of some of the Quilt of Valour Challenge quilts. I just found the results of the Challenge on the Northcott website (See Related Links).

My favourite quilt didn't make the top 3 but all the quilts were great.

In that same post, I promised that I would share with you some of the other quilts presented at Quilt Canada 2017. Here they are!

My Place in Canada 2017 Youth Quilt Challenge


















The winners are posted on the Canadian Quilters Association website (see link below).The quilts were really great. We have many budding artists if they keep it up! I just wanted to show you my favourite - it didn't win but for me evokes many memories of my childhood.

1967 Centennial 

I don't have any information on these two quilts but I did want to show them to you. The first quilt is more traditional but the second one must have been very modern for its time since it could easily pass as a modern quilt now.

Traditional quilt celebration Canada's Centennial

Modern looking quilt celebrating Canada's Centennial

What I learned

• I had a really great time trying new techniques for the Canada 150 Art Quilt. I now have some ideas for the two art quilts that I started during Hillary Rice's workshop. I'm looking forward to working on them and trying more of Hillary's techniques.
• Aren't the Youth and Centennial quilts amazing? It was a real treat getting to see them all at Quilt Canada 2017. 
• I've really enjoyed hosting the Celebrate - Fêtons 150 link-ups. It's been a great experience. I was going to keep the link-up for the rest of the year but I don't think that it will see much action. I will keep it for this month, so hopefully you will post whatever you have created around the theme of Canada.
• Next month will be the start of a new link-up theme. I haven't figured out the details yet (or a catchy name and image) but the theme will definitely be around learning. I want to make it as inclusive as possible, so it will include trying all kinds of things such as new techniques, new colours schemes etc. I will be announcing it August 1st, so please come back!

Related Links

• Map of Canada by Northcott
• Canada 150 Art Quilt post - Playing and Trying New Techniques, June 11, 2017
• Hillary Rice
• Easy Triangle Quilt Hanging Sleeve YouTube video with Heirloom Creations
• Countdown to Canada - Fêtons 150! post - June 22, 2017
• Northcott's Sesquicentennial Quilts of Valour Challenge Results
• Youth Quilt Challenge Winners

Project Details

Canada 150 Art Quilt

13 ½" x 13"

Materials: eco-printed cotton, cotton, novelty yarn, beads, charm, metal, thread, tulle, paper

Techniques: crafted appliqué technique, sheer overlay, encasement, free motion embroidery, couching, metal appliqué, free motion quilting, embroidery, bead trail, 

Prize - I will be drawing the prize for the June link-ups soon.

Linking Parties I will be linking this post to many link-ups. Check out what everyone is doing, including Canada day and the Fourth of July! I have linked-up to Joanne, of Canuck Quilter's linking party. Check out her great Canada 150 quilt that she designed! Needle & Thread Thursday, Off the Wall Friday, Finished or Not Friday, Oh Scrap, MOP Monday, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, Moving it Forward Monday, Design Wall Monday, Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers, Free Motion Mavericks

Update: Claire (aka Briarose) has these two lovely quilts to add to our link-up. She made them for her grandsons, Jacob (who is not yet a month) and his older brother, James, who is almost 6! The patterns are, of course, by Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts.

Quilts made by Briarose for her grandsons

Quilts made by Briarose for her grandsons

To download the button, click here.

An InLinkz Link-up

Playing and Trying New Techniques

Appliquéd English Paper Pieced flag

I've enjoyed making Canada 150 quilts, but following other people's patterns and doing traditional quilting for any length of time is difficult for me. I need time to create and play with fabrics without a pattern or clear idea of where I'm going. So I decided to create a Canada 150 art quilt with some of the techniques I learned during Hillary Rice's surface design workshop.

As you may have read in my post, several weeks ago I took a two-day surface design and embellishment course with Hillary Rice. It was great to learn new techniques from this wonderful lady, but I felt unsettled. We sampled many techniques and were supposed to create an art quilt using these, but even as I started two pieces I couldn't get into it. In retrospect, I think I needed a theme or a vision for the art quilts, especially abstract ones.

This piece started with English Paper Piecing. Using a diamond template that I bought at the Festival of Quilts show and freezer paper, I made some diamond pieces with Canada 150 fabric.

Do you recall that I've said, many times, that I'm accuracy challenged? Well the diamonds were not accurate but I did manage to put these nine pieces together as a symbol of a Canadian flag.

Details of the sheer overlay and encasement, and thread painting

For the background, I used some beautiful blue eco-printed fabric with maple leaves that I bought at Fibre Fling 6. I added a strip of text fabric in the middle and then started playing. Here are the steps and the different techniques I used from the workshop. After appliquéing the English paper pieced flag, I used sheer overlay for the centre maple leaf. I placed the pink tulle over the leaf and free motion stitched around the leaf in a bright red Rainbows thread by Superior Threads. I left an opening because I was hoping to find something to place within it. This is called encasement - and I finally found a little cutting tool that made snow flakes - how perfect!

At the top left, the fabric suggested Northern Lights. I used shiny Madeira Polyneon and Gütermann machine embroidery thread to do free motion embroidery. I really like the effect but as I look at the image here, I'm going to make the northern lights bigger.

Suggesting regions of Canada with appliqué

Under the flag, you can see the couching of knobby gold yarn. I followed the design on the fabric to outline some mountains. I attached the couching by hand and then, between the two couched lines I added some sparking sheer overlay. To give the impression of snow, I embroidered three of the mountain peeks.

At the bottom centre, again following the outline of the fabric, I added several layers of organza and embroidered around them. I know that I should have waited to add the fish, but I was too impatient. Besides, I just free motion quilted around them!

Once this was completed, I had no idea how to add elements that would suggest various parts of Canada. I went into my landscaping stash and found some fabrics that I thought might work.

I used the crafted appliqué method and ironed the fabric onto the background. I then free motioned appliquéd the fabric and added thread painting.

Canada 150 art quilt incorporating some of the techniques learned 

I don't think that there's much left to finish this piece. I need to work on the northern lights and then probably free motion quilt designs in the background that will bring all of the appliquéd pieces together. I'm not sure if I'll be able to add more techniques I learned to this piece. There are still 11 techniques to go! Maybe this will encourage me to keep working on my class pieces!

What I learned

• I didn't realise how many techniques we had covered until I started going over my notes and looking at my samples. Although I knew some of the techniques, there were many that I've wanted to try out but didn't really have the courage to do so by myself.
• I would love to add encaustic to this piece - it's using melted crayons to add colour. It was my all time favourite technique of the workshop, followed closely by metal appliqué. More about these when I finally use them :-) 

Related Links

• Celebrating 150 with Quilts, May 18, 2017
• Hillary Rice
• Fibre Fling 6, March 20, 2017
• Superior Threads

Linking Parties: I will be linking this post to the following link-ups. Have a look to see what everyone is up to! MOP Monday, Slow Sunday Stitching, Off the Wall Friday, Oh Scrap! Finished or Not Friday, Main Crush Monday, Moving it Forward Monday, Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers, Celebrate - Fêtons 150 in June, Design Wall Mondays,