See Me and My Trunk Show in Person!

Tooting my own horn

The Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild was contacted by TAGOR, Textile Arts Guild of Richmond, to see if anyone could give a talk about this "Modern Quilting" movement that's been going around.  I eagerly agreed and here's the updated announcement:

If anyone is in the lower mainland (for you non-BC residents, that means if you're in the Vancouver area.) feel free to come.  Well I guess not free, but do come.

While, I'm on a tangent, you know how Washington state talks about the Pacific Northwest? Does that make this part of Canada the Pacific Southwest?  Does it feel a bit like the US doesn't know anything exists above their border?  Any-how, lower mainland is pretty much all the communities along the mouth of the Fraser River up to Abbotsford, I guess.  That would be Vancouver, North Van, West Van, Burnaby, Port Moody, Coquitlam, PoCo, New Westminster, Maple Ridge, Mission, Richmond, Delta, Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and White Rock. When I looked it up, I see Chilliwack isn't included and that's my hometown!  and if you go much further, you're beyond Hope.  Oops, Google says it includes Chilliwack and Hope too and actually contains 59% of BCs population!  You are all welcome to come.

I've started collecting quilts I made for others back for the talk, and of course will show lots of unfinished quilts, as that's pretty much my thing.  You know, make the quilt top, then put it away.  I was thinking of trying to get a couple more finished for the show, but, why?  I don't want to pressure myself when there's so much else happening and of course so many more quilt tops to start on too!

Do come as I'll be talking about some of the traits of modern quilts and how they are really variations of what we all do as traditional quilters.  If you are a traditional quilter, you may see a quilt of mine that you'd like to try for yourself.  The fun of alot of modern quilts is you don't need a pattern.  Just sketch out a sort of layout or plan, and then go for it.

There's going to be a lot of this if I don't get some "holders":

Check out the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild on Flickr for pictures of our members quilts

And there's a great group to help and encourage you - the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild and the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild.

Trunk Show Part 3 - Still Pre-Modern

Here's some more traditional quilts that I made in the late 80s early 90s.

Irish Chains

The big green one on the back is a triple Irish chain that my mother and aunt hand quilted on a big frame in Chilliwack.  My aunt and oma have made thick satin quilts for all the girls for their weddings which were filled with a thick batting of carded wool.  The quilting in that kind of quilt is quite wide spread and contains hearts and diamonds in the borders.  Mom and Dad have one that got them through the Saskatchewan winters when they first married.  I had mom and aunty Martha just follow the dark green squares and do diagonal lines across the quilt.  This one got stolen from a house I was renting.  The police figured they wrapped all the stuff they took in it so it looked like they were just heading down the street to the laundry-mat or something.

The blue single Irish chain was for a good friend Michael who shared the house I was living in.  I think his mother has it now.  Single Irish chain quilts are easy to do.  Just make a bunch of 9 patches that look like the 5 face of a dice, then alternate them with solid squares the same size as the whole 9 patch. 

Stack and Whack

I always wanted to do a stack and whack, but I really hated this one once I got this far.  So I gave it to a friend, Vince, who said he loved it and would finish it.  I think the feature fabric wasn't the best for this technique.  I think I got it because the repeat was very close so I wouldn't have to buy a lot to get 8 repeats for the pinwheels.  And I don't like the yellows or the green.  Makes me wonder why I even started it.

Trunk Show Part 2 - More Traditional Quilts

Here's more of my trunk show.  I'm still in my traditional phase here in the mid 90s.

 In 1993 I quilt my job at the Royal Bank and cut up my dress shirts to make this quilt top. The yellow zig zag isn't working for me, so I'll take that off when I finish it - if I ever do.

All of 94 I traveled through Africa from Cairo to Capetown using local transportation. This quilt is my diary of the trip.

In each town I visited, I would go to the tailor shops and ask for scraps of fabric. Once I had a few blocks done, I could just show them what I wanted the fabric for. Most of the fabric I got for free. I embroidered the name of the country, the town, and the name of the fabric, or the type of outfit that would be made from the fabric.

I have enough blocks made for two more quilts.

Trunk Show Part 1 - Gramma Walker's Quilts

I tried to photograph all the quilts I have hanging around so I have a record of them.  I'm going to try to post them in sort-of chronological order.

But first I got to start with the quilts that inspired me to start quilting.

I think this is the oldest one I have from my Gramma Walker in West Virginia.  A nice red and white one that has a sort of Jacob's Ladder block set on point.

 This next one, I was told, was made from my mom and her older sister's dresses.  One wore red and the other wore blue.  I'm going to have to confirm it with Aunty Wanda.  These would have been made in the late 40s early 50s.

This yellow one is a quilt from the "missionary cupboard".  The church ladies in Hanna Alberta made these Bible verse quilts for the missionaries.  We must have had 3 or 4 of these growing up, but this seems to be the only one that survived - probably because we kept it here in Canada and didn't take it out to India.  This one has the verses drawn on with liquid embroidery tubes.  Can you find the misspelled block?

 

This is one of the older quilts I made while I was still making traditional quilts.  It's a very traditional log cabin quilt laid out in the straight furrows style.

 

And this last one is a nice scrappy block with several shades of light and dark grey.  I think the block is called the road home.  This one and the log cabin one are single bed size.