Sunday, June 19, 2016

Slow Sunday Stitching and Quilt Canada

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching where we celebrate the art of hand stitching! We encourage you to pick up a needle and thread, and slowly taking some relaxing stitches today. 
I have hand stitching news to share with you from Quilt Canada. If you want to read my other posts you can click here for some of my highlights, here for machine quilting class, and here for improv class notes.
But first, please hop over to visit our friend Sandra who blogs over at Quilting at the Cro's Nest. Sandra is a regular linker at Slow Sunday Stitching and she has some great news to share with us. I won't spill the beans because it's her news to tell, but I'm so excited for her! I know you will want to send your congratulations to her so make sure to drop by.
And now onto the CQ hand stitching report. As you have probably noticed in your own area of the world, there are usually only a few hand stitched items entered into most shows. Most of the quilts are "art quilts" and most are machine quilted. But there were a couple of wonderful hand stitched quilts in the National Juried Show 2016. 

It's always fun to see a whole cloth quilt in person since they are as rare as hens teeth. The winner of the "Excellence in Hand Quilting" ribbon was given to a quilt called "Palmetto" made by Georgia Beale. This was her own design inspired by a tin ceiling in a general store. Inspiration is everywhere! This is a beautiful quilt, but my photographs did not do it justice. Here is just a small part of the quilt to show you a some of the exquisite quilting. 


This next quilt was easy to photograph. It is called "Not Now, Maybe Never" made by Joan Dorsay. It is such a fun quilt, with the red background and all the bright colours.  It won first place in the category for Bed/Wall quilts made from patterns.



And just look at all these perfectly constructed circles! There are hundreds of them on this quilt in the blocks, in the sashing and in the border. All hand appliqued and all hand quilted. I had my eyeballs right up to this quilt for quite a while.

So are you inspired now? I hope so! I hope you are already thinking of the next stitches to put into your beautiful project. I will be working on my embroidery project. The poor thing has not seen much progress in the last month, and I think I might have to redraw the pattern since the iron-on transfer seems to have faded. 
Please link up your blog post below and share the hand stitching project you are working on today.

   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

10 comments:

Gretchen Weaver said...

I like the whole cloth quilt but the red one, WOW! I really love that one. I'll write down the name and designer and maybe, someday, when I've completed all the other projects I've done. I have a whole cloth top that needs to be quilted. I haven't really come up with another quilt to quilt this winter, maybe this will be the year of the whole cloth quilt. I'm glad you had a fun time at Quilt Canada. Blessings, Gretchen

Kaja said...

Two fantastic quilts; thanks so much for sharing them here.

Deb @ Frugal Little Bungalow said...

What beautiful quilts and how fun to see Sandra getting an award! :)

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

I won't be stitching today, but, I'll be going to a quilt show, run by a hand stitching group of ladies (machine quilted items are allowed, too).

Deb said...

Wow the red quilt sure is a stunner, and the whole cloth quilt inspired by a tin ceiling, years ago a tin ceiling is what lured me to rent a pre-WW2 apartment. Hope you have time for your Life is Beautiful embroideries.

Janet O. said...

Oh, my goodness, that quilt is GORGEOUS! And I love the name. : )

Ivani said...

Two wonderful quilts, thanks for sharing. Congratulations to Sandra!

Nancy said...

Such a beautiful quilts! Thanks for showing them to us. If I ever want to make a quilt as fine as these I will need to keep up with my slow stitching and keep improving!
--Nancy. (ndmessier @ aol.com, joyforgrace.blogspot.com)

Karen - Quilts...etc. said...

I just love that red quilt!!

Kate said...

Both quilts are gorgeous! Just thinking about the time, effort and love put into each project is pretty inspiring.