York Heritage Quilters Guild Meeting - Hilary Rice

Last night at our guild meeting the guest speaker was Hilary Rice from Nova Scotia:  http://www.mestudios.ca/  As her web site claims she really is more a textile and mixed media artist than a quilter. As a child she loved both music and art but in high school had to make a choice and went into music. She married had a family, then her husband decided to change careers, and went from the corporate world and became an Anglican minister.

Being a minister, you and your family end up travelling a lot across the country to different postings. Hillary transitioned out of music and into art and took up weaving and spinning. In BC she was involved in various weavers and spinners guilds, but then her husband got posted to a town where there wasn't a weavers and spinners guild. One of the ladies from that church invited her to their quilt guild and she got introduced to quilting. That was in 2000. So she hasn't been doing it long. Also she really didn't start out in the traditional piecing type quilting, she did more landscape and art quilts almost from the beginning. She quickly experimented with embellishments, different fabrics and techniques. She then moved into using metal, glass, wood, etc, and burning things, melting things, etc. So it really evolved beyond quilting. I got some pictures of her work that she brought which is the art and landscape quilts that she has done. On her web site you can see more of her more current abstract work.

Cherish Nature - Part 6

This week was busy finishing up the trapunto work and then getting my quilt sandwich put together.  Here is a picture of all the little egg shaped pieces of quilt batting attached to the back of my quilt top.  I first fused Misty Fuse to one side of some scraps of quilt batting.  Then I cut out my egg shapes using an egg template that I made from a firm plastic that is used to make templates.  Yes I did count how many eggs I have on the quilt, and there are 260.  Once they were all cut out, the side with the Misty Fuse was ironed on to the back of the quilt. 

I also decided to make a couple of the birds and bees as well a the larger eggs from the appliqué work into traputo as well.  here is a close up of one of the bird quilt bats attached to the back of the quilt.  I will have to say all this extra batting has made this quilt more heavy than normal.

I also came across a new method of pinning quilt sandwiches this summer and I'm finally giving it a try.  Here is what the Pinmoor system looks like.  They are just these little foam tubes that you use with straight pins to pin the quilt sandwich together.  It's suppose to be easier than safety pins and not leave as large of a hole as does a safety pin.  I have noticed on several occasions that safety pins can leave rather large holes in a quilt top that you then have to try and smooth out.

Here is what they look like on the quilt sandwich.  Now I don't know about them actually being easier to use than safety pins.  I think because they are something new it will take a bit of getting use to.

These are the type of safety pin system that I use which makes it easier to install the pins in the the quilt.  I discover years ago the little plastic covers for the safety pins that makes it easier to grab a hold of them to pin them to the quilts.  I ended up using both systems on this quilt since I didn't have enough of the Pinmoors.  So I will let you know what I think of the new system as I work with them on this quilt.

Cherish Nature - Part 5

I got the back pieced for the Cherish Nature quilt.  I wanted to use up the rest of the blocks from the panel so this is what I came up with.  The mottled fabric is the same one that went around the main birds nest on the front of the quilt.  The brown fabric is Kaufman's fusion in espresso.  So my next step is to work on getting all the extra layers of batting on the eggs done for the trapunto that I will be doing on them.  Hopefully I will be able to get that finished during the week so that I can then make up the quilt sandwich and start quilting next weekend.

Cherish Nature - Part 4

I have finished piecing the Cherish Nature quilt top.  I now have to prep the egg borders for the trapunto work, and I'm also thinking that I might enhance some of the blocks that were appliquéd with trapunto. For example the 3 small blocks below the large bird nest, I'm thinking of doing some trapunto work on the birds and the bumble bees. I also still have to figure out the back for this quilt.  I have some left over pieces from the panel that I think I would like to use up so I will have to play around with that idea.