More Quilts at the Creek

Today I've got some more quilts from the third annual Quilts at the Creek. While the show is organized by the York Heritage Quilters' Guild anyone can show a quilt. There are no ribbon, no viewers choice and no judging. It is simply a showing of quilts old and new, modern and traditional. I took lots of pictures but with almost 280 quilts on display it was impossible take pictures of every one of them. So get your cup of tea and lets get going. In this picture I think you can an idea of the range of styles of quilts! Check out the portrait in the front left side!

The quilt on the left was a simple square in a square quilt but the colours were so rich that it immediately caught my eye.

The quilt was quilted with big stitch and two colours of thread were used to create an argyle design.

This quilt was exquisite. The piecing was perfect and the applique was stunning.

The quilting was done by machine, well done by machine.

I thought that it was very interesting the way this quilt was finished. Notice how the star points extend beyond  the edge of the quilt!

My friend Gail made this one. She has a such good taste in fabrics and is able to work effortlessly with both colour, value and scale. She pieced her quilt by machine and hand quilted it. The narrow pops of thin red lines really make this quilt stand out.

I loved the warm and earthy colours in this quilt. I believe the information card said that the maker was challenged to make the quilt with old fabrics from her stash. My guess is that this quilt may have been paper pieced. There are instructions for a liberated quilt very similar to this in Sujata Shah's book Cultural Fusions Quilts. I am very tempted to give it a go. 

This quilt was very interesting. The centre panel looks like applique but it isn't!

It is a printed panel and the yellow background was very densely quilted to make the floral motifs pop. And pop they did!

The red stripe border on this quilt makes the whole thing sing, sing, sing! I love the old timey look of this quilt. I want one of these too.

This quilt was made by renowned quilt maker Mary Elizabeth Kinch. Her work really speaks to me. She published a pattern for this quilt in the June 2005 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. I love all of the madders she used for the little (I do mean little) half square triangles!

The quilting was absolutely perfect.

There were so many beautiful quilts and each one was a labour of love. Before I go I thought I would share one more quilt. Naturally it is a hexagon quilt! I was told that this one was pieced by machine. It is a new quilt in a simple grandmother's flower garden arrangement but it looks old and loved.

What I found particularly interesting was the machine quilting. A simple leaf was quilted in each of the white path hexagons and in the flower a simple dahlia motif. The effect was perfect.

boomerRose, one of the organizers of Quilts at the Creek sent me a link to a Flickr page that has been set up to share pictures from the show. Thanks for the link; unfortunately you are a no reply blogger so I couldn't sent a personal note. For all you readers, get yourself a nice cup of something, settle back and enjoy the slide show which you will find it here.

Time for me to get back to my sewing. I've been working away on Green Parrot and my Brinton Hall quilt. I'll have pictures to share in my next blog post. Until I post again, happy sewing.
Karen H

Quilts at the Creek - Pioneer Spirit

Hello people! I survived the weekend and had an absolute blast sharing my work with people who visited Quilts at the Creek at Black Creek Pioneer Village. It was a beastly hot and humid weekend but the sun was shining and the quilts were absolutely glorious!

My talks were in the Town Hall. It was a lovely old building. It was nice and cool inside when I first entered but you pack a bunch of excited quilt makers into the space and things heated up pretty quickly!

Hanging in front were two gorgeous quilts. Both were made as part of a mystery quilt challenge. The name of the challenge was Pioneer Spirit Mystery and the quilt was designed by Sherri Hisey of Border Creek Station. Thirty quilters made and showed their versions of this quilt at the show. If you want to make your own the full instructions are available free of charge here.

Here I am standing at the front with my quilt Chop's Pick hanging on the right side.

I don't have pictures of my trunk show but I do have pictures of the quit show. Look at the quilts moving in the breeze! And right up front is yet another Pioneer Spirit quilt.

There were so many quilts to see but today I thought I would share pictures of many of the Pioneer Spirit quilts. Although it is a single pattern there were options: the blocks could be straight set or set on point. Backgrounds could be squares of a single fabric or pieced squares of four fabrics. Corners could be finished in several ways. To give you an idea take a look at these fabulous quilts!

Here the blocks were straight set. The colours in this one were so pretty and soft.

This fresh blue and white Pioneer Spirit was made by a member of my Guild and her blocks are set on point. Most of the quilts were borderless but she added a nice dark border and corner blocks. What a summery quilt this is!

Love the greens - it reminds me of 7 Up bottles!

The next two quilts are full of juicy goodness. Clearly these quilt makers are not afraid of colour.

A very soft colour palette - this one has a wintery look and feel to it.

This reminds me of old Roman glass or sea glass. 

Love, love, love the drama of this one. It reminds me of my friend Babs' hexagon quilts Yellow Bird and Yellow Bird's Sister.

Another quilt made with muted caramel colours with the blocks set on point. There isn't a strong contrast between the colours so it give the quilt a very soft look. This would be a great quilt to snuggle under!

Another fresh and delicate quilt. This is one I can envision on an old cast iron bed with the frame painted a fresh, crisp white!

The little red nine patches really pop on this one. The photograph just doesn't do this quilt (or any of them) justice!

Here we see dark nine patches set with pastels and once again the star is the nine patch.

Drama, drama, drama! There is strong contrast and and a varied colour palette makes for a very interesting quilt.

Again there is strong contrast but this time the maker chose to work with a limited colour palette and it created a very different quilt.

Another limited colour palette was used in this quilt. To my eye the nine patches appear to recede and this creates a totally different look.

Yellow, black, grey and white make for a honey of a quilt! Notice the corner treatment.

This one is loaded with grapey goodness. The makers fabric choices are so interesting. I see circles around most of the nine patches and that makes this quilt look very different from the others.

This is a another fresh summery quilt in cool greens.

This one really caught my eye. The combination of soft greens and caramels make for an all seasons quilt.

This would make a great quilt for a boy. The browns against the background are so fresh and crisp.

This is another quilt that was very attractive but just didn't photograph well.

This is another one where I can see circles surrounding the nine patches. A very interesting visual effect!

 Browns of similar value on a dark cream background give the quilt an entirely different feel.

Careful colour placement resulted in a quit that has a look that is all its own. The dark nine patches add drama.

There were more Pioneer Spirit quilts but unfortunately my pictures didn't turn out well. I'll have more show pictures to share with you in the coming days.

Until I post again keep cool and happy sewing!
Karen H

Sorting quilts

I've been busy pulling, sorting and refolding quilts for my trunk shows at Quilts at the Creek this weekend. It is a big job but as you can see I've got a "helper". Not much help if you ask me! Sorting quilts will just have to wait until he has finished his little nap.

The title of my talk is "English Paper Piecing and More". It is so hard to decide which quilts to take because they all have some feature that I think might be of interest to others. I will bring a few quilt tops one of which is Gardens of a King, a pattern I tested for Missie Carpenter of Traditional Primitives. The pattern is now available from her shop. You can see my quilt folded on top of the pile in the picture above.  The quilt was made using English paper piecing (EPP). I added my own personal touches such as the sun face in the upper left corner and a moon face in the lower right corner. It is a little detail that makes the quilt my own. I also added some butterflies and ladybugs in the floral applique b locks in the borders.

Gardens of a King by Karen H

I plan on taking Flora and Fauna, Parts of the Garden as part of the "more" portion of my talk. This quilt does not use EPP but it is one of my quilts that I love the most because of all of the little details. It was a challenge quilt. There were three fabrics that had to be used (all of which I detested and did my best to disguise) and I was able to add an additional six fabrics. I chose three greens, one brown, one blue and a very busy print on a butter colour background. I fussy cut last fabric to create all sorts of additional colours, plants and creatures. I also the wrong side of the blue fabric in the kit and that gave me two shades of the same fabric. You can't do this will all fabrics but in this case it worked!

Flora and Fauna, Parts of the Garden by Karen H

One of the reasons I like Flora and Fauna is because of all the little vignettes that I was able to create within the quilt. Here are a few examples.

I know this quilt appears as though it was difficult to make. I didn't have much of a plan for this quilt other than there would be a circle of blue in the middle for the sky. I would border it with a narrow bit of green for the grass and then a wide border of brown for the earth. The last border would be a pale green just because I like green! I used a fabric safe marker to draw the stems of the plants that would start at the green grass and reach up toward the sky. They were embroidered with two strands of floss. Once I had that framework completed I just started filling in the spaces with bits of this and that. I quilted tunnels for the ant colony in the brown border and then filled the tunnels with little brown ants. I worked on this quit top while sitting outside and as I saw bees, grasshoppers, butterflies, inchworms and other insects I would find a space where I could add them to the quilt. If I liked what I had done I would repeat it in other areas of the quilt! The more I added the more ideas I had. Before I knew it the whole thing was chock-a-block with creatures and plants. You don't have to make an entire quilt of detailed creations - you could just take one or two tiny details to a big quilt. Small details have big impact. That's what I did when I added bee details to the centre medallion of my quilt Mom's Flower Bed. The following pictures shows the centre medallion. On the blue-green batik hexagons that connect the green stars I added bees. The bee bodies were cut from yellow fabric. The stripes were added with my Sakura Pigma pens and then I appliqued the bodies to the hexagons. The wings were drawn on the fabric with my Sakura pens. Once this was done I cut my hexagons and continued English paper piecing in the usual way.

This is a close-up of the bees. Want to make your own bee? I did a little tutorial and you will find it here.

Bees not your thing? How about adding a grasshopper? I like to sneak a grasshopper into a quilt and tell the recipient it is there but not where it is. It is especially fun for children to search their quilt for the grasshopper! The tutorial is here.

I continue to work on my Green Parrot hexagon quilt but every time I put it on the floor to have a look this is what happens! There are plenty of places to wrestle but it seems that Green Parrot holds particular appeal for the boys, Jinx and Gump.

And when exhausted from wresting this is what happens. Jinx stretches out to have a nap on the quilt. Cute but not at all helpful!

I have managed to stitch the olive-brown border to the top section of Green Parrot. The final round will be a dusty pale green. I'm thinking I will fill in the "Vs" at the top with more pale green to finish the top edge but I'll make that decision when I get to that point.

There'll be little or no sewing for two days but it will be fun to share my quilts with others at Quilts at the Creek and I'm really looking forward to touring the outdoor show where 300 quilts will be on display. I'll try to take pictures and share them with you in an upcoming post. My talks will be at the Town Hall at 11:30 on Saturday and Sunday. If you are at the show and have time please pop in and say hello!

That's it for me until next week. Happy sewing!
Karen H