Heritage Park Festival of Quilts - 2016!

I had a fabulous weekend at the HP FoQ!!!  So much fun talking and geeking out with so many quilty friends!  I had a number of my own quilts in the show and I am really pumped by the number of my customers' quilts that I quilted that were also in the show.  There were just so many really fabulous quilts - hundreds of them!

These are my own quilts (look at previous posts for close ups of the quilting detail on all of the following quilts):


"Read All Over"  [pattern is a Susan Madu "Strip and Flip"]

"Rainbow Connection" [based on the "Burst Block" by Man Sewing]

"What the Hex" [no pattern]

"Patchwork City" [pattern by Elizabeth Hartman]

"Draco Ostium" [unknown artist did the initial drawing]

Here are some customer quilts: 

The first three are part of a Susan Madu "Strip and Flip" design group entry.  I quilted these three.  The first one is Susan's and she used it as the cover for her pattern [look for Modern Blended Quilts].  The next two were made by her friend Armiel, who was testing the pattern.

Next up is Rachel's "Gravity Quilt".  We were both pretty excited that it got the prime display spot in the park!  Front and centre on the Wainright Hotel!  Both days!

Next three, below: Agnes's "IKEA Rug".

Below: Agnes's "Bright Birch Trees"

Next three below: Jodi's "Square in Square" - two of them - blue and pink.

Next three below: another Susan Madu Modern Blended Quilts - "Rail in Rail"  - again this one is the cover for her pattern.

Finally - another of Agnes's quilts - Hexies.

Dragon Door

I belong to the Calgary Long-Arm Quilting Group - not really a guild, but a growing group of people who do long-arm quilting - some for just their own quilts and some who also quilt for others.  We decided to do a wholecloth quilt group entry into the annual Heritage Park Festival of Quilts.  So I signed up and spent a bit of time figuring out what I wanted to do and then how to do it (described at the bottom of the pix).  Here is my resulting contribution to our group entry: Draco Ostium, which is the Latin for Dragon Door.

I didn't want to do a "traditional" wholecloth.  I was thinking dragons - we've been watching too many "period" TV where dragons are featured in tapestries, etc.  I found a black and white clip art illustration, imported it to EQ7, traced it in EQ7 then printed it out to the size I needed.  The thing I like about EQ7 is that once the drawing is done it can be printed to any size and it will automatically tile the printout for 8.5*11" paper. The final size of the wall hanging is 26" * 40".  

That was the "easy" part.  Then I had to figure out how to mark it onto black fabric.  In the end I bought some white "carbon" paper.  Of course it's not actually carbon, but some sort of white chalk.  I used that to trace the design onto the fabric.  Because it was chalk it would not last long once I started working with it so the first thing I did once I had it mounted on the frame was to do one stitch line over the entire design.  That became my outline.  From there I stitched over the outlines 4-5 times in gold.  Then I did the background in "mahogany" Glide thread (which is what I use on almost all of my quilting - it runs really well in my machine).  The background is a variety of micro sized fillers - pebbles, matchstick, and swirls.

I was going for a sort of old leather or wood look and I'm really happy with the  way it turned out!