A quilt for Joey

The London Friendship Quilt Guild ran a row of the month project last year.  Each month, we received a Canadian themed block, representing various regions and symbols of Canada.  Cathy Shepherd designed the sashings that were added between the rows and around the quilt and a row of flying geese at each side and wrote up the instructions.  I had collected some Canadian themed fabrics and decided to make this quilt for my grandson, Joey, as his bedroom doubles as the family guestroom and he sleeps in a queen sized bed.  I asked him if he'd like this quilt and he agreed as long as it had a beaver in it!  Yes, there was a row of beavers planned for this row quilt :-).    The quilt turned out massive!  I had Julie Cassidy quilt it as I did not want to tackle that one under my domestic machine!  I took Joey to Julie's home to see the long arm machine and he got to pick out the quilting design as well as the thread colour.  The quilt is quilted with polar bears, moose and trees in a thread called "prickly pear".  It is perfect for this quilt.

I did not end up using that many of the Canadian fabrics in the front as they were too busy, so used the collection I had accumulated to piece together a backing.  The result is a completely reversible quilt!  (click on the photos to enlarge for a better view)

This was the collection of fabrics that I used for the quilt (with a few later additions).

the Beaver in the quilt was paper pieced

The inukshuk and moon over the mountain blocks were appliqued

the Polar Bears were also paper pieced

Moose quilting in prickly pear thread

Polar bear and trees quilting on the barn blocks

The finished quilt front

Finished quilt back