Wardsville 200th Anniversary

On Saturday (June 19th) Jake and I drove to Wardsville, ON, a small town in SW Ontario to check out the Barn quilt project that was undertaken by the town's residents, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the founding of the town. It was a lovely day for a drive! The quilt blocks were amazing. The ladies of the town made a quilt with each block depicting one aspect of George Ward's life. Many volunteers painted the blocks onto wood panels. These blocks will be attached to barns and other buildings around the area to create a history tour. The London Free Press had a story in Monday's paper. More information is on the town's website. Here you can see some of the wooden quilt blocks lined up against the fence of the ball diamond (click on the pictures to enlarge them):


The second half of the blocks:

In the background, you can see a tent, part of a little historic village set up by reenactors depicting life 200 years ago. There was a general store, display of games and handmade chairs, some sheep and rope making demonstrations.

Close up of Crossed Canoes block:

The last block on the quilt depicting the Centennial of Wardsville:

Rising Sun block with me standing beside it to give you an idea how big these panels are. (I am 5' 4.5" tall :-).

What a massive undertaking that was for the town's people!! The guide told us that there should be information on the above website when the blocks are on the buildings.

Playing with Colour!

I had some fun playing with a few Kaffe Fasset fabrics I purchased at the Marsh Store a few weeks ago. I have been fascinated with Kaffe's fabrics for a number of years and decided to buy a few small pieces and make some miniature log cabin blocks with 1" strips and just have fun playing. I think it needs some purple too! No idea what I'm going to make with it? A fun summery table topper?

Another Quilting Night in Canada

Gail, Nancy, Karen and I got together tonight for QNIC and got quite a bit accomplished. Gail and I worked on our quilts for the chemo unit at our local hospital. This is my first set of braids...second set is almost finished. The background colour on this picture looks black, but it's actually an eggplant sort of brown/purple colour.

Gail has three sets finished of the green background set. We will do four sets altogether; then add sashings and borders to make a nice sized lap quilt.

Charity's Baby quilt

My granddaughter, Charity, was born on January 22nd, 2010. I did get her quilt finished, except for appliqueing the pink flowers onto the quilt to make it more suitable for a girl. When we got the call that it was a girl, I quickly cut out a couple of flowers and took them along to the hospital for the baby visit and we decided that they would look great. I finally got the quilt back yesterday and sewed some pink flowers onto the quilt. Now it can go back to baby! It is already being well used. Here is the finished quilt:

It is stitched in the ditch around the circles and then quilted with loops in the background with a variegated King Tut thread.

The applique was done with another variegated King Tut thread on my Bernina 830 which does a lovely satin stitch.

The pattern was in a Fons & Porter magazine. When I locate it, I will add the information.