collected quilts

I'm up on the third floor working on this blog before it gets too hot up here. There are lots of good things about living in a hundred year old home, but the bad part is no central air conditioning! It's been about 30 degrees celcius everyday for the past three weeks so it can get pretty hot up here!

Over the years I have collected a few antique quilts. Unfortunately, none of these quilts have any info on the back, a good reminder for me to remember to include name of quilt pattern, quilter's name and year made on a label on the back.

This one is machine pieced and hand quilted. It was in perfect condition when I bought it. It now has a few nibbles on the binding from when I had the hampster cage too close to it. The hampster is thankfully long gone!

This one has some damage on it but I love the colours!

This quilt is all hand pieced from strips of satin, something I would never attempt because it's so slippery.

This one is just stripped of fabrics from the 30's and 40's that someone has sewn together.

clear lake

Hi, I took a break from quilting the beginning of July for 10 wonderful days in Riding Mountain National Park, in the town of Wasagaming on Clear Lake. We stay in a two bedroom motel unit with with a full kitchen, living room and eating area so we have lots of space. This year the weather was so warm we didn't spend much time indoors, we were either in the pool or by the lake. My husband bought an IPhone this year and is enjoying taking photos with it, so I am posting his pictures, which turned out much better than mine.

 We've been coming to Clear Lake for holidays for 13 years, the kids were 8 and 6 the first time.

 There is a flea market every weekend and I was hoping to find something to add to my turquoise collection, I found it, but it was too large to fit in the car. It would have looked great in our house!

When we walk out our back door, in the evenings we usually stop for an ice cream cone and walk across the road to the lake. Isn't it beautiful!

                                   The beach on Canada Day, usually it's not that full!

My sister and her three kids stay in the unit next door so we do lots of crafts. In this photo they are adding the finishing touches to some tie dye shirts. 

 

The group wearing the finished tie dye shirts and showing off their latest craft!

Pool time!

Deep Bay 

kaleidoscopes, jeans and mayville

In 2001 the group of us made a "stack and wack" Kaleidoscope quilt. We were to look for fabric that had a repetetive pattern, which for some reason took me to every quilt store in Winnipeg. Most of the women chose a bright floral pattern, which worked out quite nicely. Not me, I ended up choosing tropical birds.

It's hard to tell but when I stacked, wacked and then sewed each pinwheel I ended up with mutilated birds, nicknaming this quilt Buzzard Butts and Birdie Beaks. I did quilt it but as you can see never did bind it. It is without a doubt the ugliest quilt I have ever made.



You can see the buzzard butts in this one!

During the year I made a jean and flannel picnic blanket. I had a bunch of our old jeans and purchased some nice flannels on a trip to Grand Forks. Using a patch from one of my son's jeans that had the little pocket makes it special.

The backing is flannel, too but I didn't put any batting in it, it would have been to hard to sew.

By 2002, we were meeting for out 9th weekend and we had many new women quilting with us so we decided to repeat the Log Cabin. Kathy and I taught this weekend. I made this Log Cabin Queen size for our bed.

This one has been on our bed for quite awhile and has faded somewhat. I made the flower and leaf pillows to match.

There was a class taught on paper piecing in 2003 and I think that was the only year that I missed the weeked. The following year the Rag Time Flannel quilt was taught. I used the same basic pattern but did not have the hand cut fringe parts, too much cutting for me.

This my favourite lap quil,t it is very soft and cuddly. I used chenile, and regular cotton on top and flannel backing. I bought the fabric in Mayville, North Dakota. It's a really cute little town with a huge quilt shop, Faye's Hen House. The pattern reminded me of the fields of canola and flax that were in bloom at the time, so I have called this quilt Mayville in memory of a wonderul trip.