Quilt 7 (2010-2011): 162 x 244 cm (64″ x 96″). Cotton fabric hand-dyed with Procion MX fibre-reactive dyes, cotton thread, polyester thread, polyester batting, backed with cotton-poly navy sheeting. Machine-pieced and -quilted on a Singer 201-3 (made in Clydebank, Scotland in 1952).

I’m sending this to my friend Amy and her husband Brent at Beaver Creek Farm in Stevensville, Ontario. The farm quilt which I’ve been working on won’t be finished for a while–in fact, I discovered some new techniques while I was working on it and I want to start over–and the fern quilt is at the bottom of my UFO (unfinished object pile) where it will likely remain because I’m quite sick of the colours in it.

To celebrate the rain and our temporary reprieve from the burning acrid soot that has been thickening the air over Vancouver these last few weeks, I did what every nerd does: I bought some books.

Our local Book Warehouse is closing its doors to make way for another condo extravaganza so I wandered in for a final look. How lucky was I to find a copy of the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s “Shy Boy, She Devil, and Isis, The Art of Conceptual Craft, Selections from the Wornick Collection,’ for less than 30% of the bloated Canadian price on the jacket. It’s the catalog for a 2007 Museum of Fine Art (Boston) exhibition which includes, much to my delight, work by Canadian artists like Vancouver’s Peter Pierobon, Toronto’s Gord Peteran and Saskatoon’s Michael Hosaluk.

I have found the work in this book to be especially inspiring because I am finally starting another project. A close friend is remarrying and I am making a quilt for the new couple. Amy, a paramedic by day and motorcycle-driving animal rescue superhero by night, has invested her savings in Beaver Creek Farm, 20 bucolic acres on the outskirts of Southern Ontario’s rural Stevensville. The plan is to create a haven for abused, neglected and damaged animals and the menagerie already includes Vietnamese pot-belly pigs, fainting goats, a pack of ravenous toy dogs and bunnies galore, oh my!

I am impressed by the determination and vision that Amy shares with her new partner Brent, a local boy, so I have begun sketching the design for a quilt. It’s going to be a complete departure from my work to date. I began by reviewing the paintings of prairie-homestead life by one of my favourite Canadian artists, William Kurelek. Here’s a little short by (who else!) the National Film Board.

My interest in maps inevitably led me to Linda Gass’ quilted landscapes. Check them out. They’re formidable, aren’t they.

I’m going to try to quilt a map of Amy and Brent’s Beaver Creek Farm. When we were growing up it was the ‘Bremner place,’ and I have a general idea of the landscape of the farm, so I’ve interviewed Amy and Brent to find out what they envision both as a process and as a goal. Here’s the first iteration sketch. The property is bound to the west and north by Beaver Creek, an ecologically sensitive body of water that flows into a great regional swamp and from there into the mighty Niagara River. The initial plan is 7′ x 7′.

Singer 500J (front)

Singer 500J (left side)

Singer 500J (right side)

Singer 500J (back view)

The 500J is very different from the 201-3, despite the mere 9 years difference between their production date. The 201-3 (1952) is a classic black with gold accents; it looks like an electric version of the old-fashioned treadle machine your grandma had. The 500J, as you can see, is an aerodynamic design gem, beige with burgundy accents and gold lettering. The 201-3 is a powerhouse, a semi-industrial straight-stitch that will drive a needle through 8 layers of denim like a hot knife through butter. The 500J is a multi-stitch with a complicated system of switches, knobs and dials that select from dozens of stitch patterns.

If you happen to have a 500J but not the manual, click here.

I’ve essentially finished Quilt 7–all that’s left is binding the edges. I enjoyed the experiment but 3/4 of the way through I lost interest and motivation. I enjoy blockprinting and trying a whole-cloth quilt was fun, but I experimented with the quilting and the final result wasn’t really what I had in mind. I think it’ll go straight to the trunk of the car for roadside emergencies. This past weekend I found enough time to do some dyeing and I’ve got Quilt 8 percolating in my head. It’s time to get back to work.

Dyeing Supplies

Dyed fabrics for Quilt 8

I am printing with Opulence pigments suspended in a translucent medium on a 72″ x 72″ quilt top that I dyed a mossy green using Procion MX fibre-reactive dyes. I dyed it using low-water immersion (using far less water than usual so that the dye particles cannot circulate as freely and evenly) in two stages for a richly mottled and uneven effect.  The first stage resulted in a golden wheat colour, and the second stage overdyed the gold with an emerald green to result in this great green moss. It’s been a lot of work and I’m enjoying the process.  My inspiration has been west coast mosses and spring fiddleheads.

Here’s how it looked about an hour into the process:

I completed the first layer of dark-green pigment and followed that with a lighter hue that I applied incautiously. I decided to use a translucent lime green as the final blockprinting colour to give the spirals dimension and movement. The final product looks painterly with some obvious and intentional “errors”, and in the right light it’s a dead-ringer for velvet dévorée.

Here’s a ham shot:

Quilt 6 (2009): 183 x 183 cm (72″ x 72″).  Cotton fabric hand-dyed with Procion MX fibre-reactive dyes, block printed with Opulence pigments, some commercial fabrics, cotton batting and thread.  Machine-pieced and machine-quilted.

The pattern for this quilt is based on prime numbers.  I wrote a little C++ program that assigned each digit from 0 – 9 to a colour family or texture group and then made a pattern based on the occurrence of all the prime numbers.  I wanted to see what it would look like.  Note the relative lack of blue in the middle.  Interesting!

I’m using the usual charcoal cotton background that I’ve dyed myself. It’s distressed because I use low-water immersion which doesn’t let the dye particles circulate as freely.

Quilt 5 (2007-2008): 183 x 213 cm (72″ x 84″).  Hand-dyed (Procion MX fibre-reactive) and commercial patterned and solid cottons, cotton thread, polyester batting.  Hand-pieced; machine-assembled and -quilted.

My fifth quilt was an adventure.  I hand-pieced and machine assembled and quilted this red and black variation of the traditional Drunkard’s Path block.

As usual, I used my trusted Singer 201-3 (made in Clydebank, Scotland in 1952).  For the first time I used a walking foot purchased on eBay.  I still found the occasional fold in the quilting on the underside here and there, but I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t because I’m doing something wrong.

I’m not perfectly happy with the picture but I think the general effect is visible. My plan was to experiment with value. At the top of the quilt I used reds with relatively light values, and at the bottom of the quilt I used reds with deeper values. I used darker fabrics for the centres in the top of the quilt, and lighter fabrics for the centres at the bottom of the quilt, all the while trying to maintain some artistic leeway for making minor adjustments here and there.  Many of the fabrics have a Japanese or Chinese theme.

Quilt 4 (2007): 152 x 122 cm (60″ x 48″).  Hand-dyed (Procion MX fibre-reactive) cotton, commercial patterned cotton, cotton YLI thread, polyester batting.  Hand-pieced, machine-assembled; hand-quilted using a traditional hoop.

After making my first three quilts and lots of mistakes, I thought it was high time to take a class and learn from an expert.  So in Spring 2007 I took a beginner’s quilting class at the Thread Bear quilt shop in North Vancouver (now closed).  The instructors, a pair of energetic sextagenerians named Doris and Shirley, taught us how to make templates, trace and cut pieces, hand-sew the pieces into traditional blocks and the blocks into a quilt, layer and then hand-quilt our work using a traditional hoop.

This sampler quilt is made from commercial and hand-dyed (reactive) cottons, hand-pieced, and machine-assembled with cotton thread using a Singer 201-3 (made in Clydebank, Scotland in 1952), layered with polyester batting and quilted with cotton thread.  I dyed the charcoal backing using low-water immersion and reactive dyes.  I learned how to do this at Emily Carr at a great 4-week textile printing class.

Quilt 3 (2006-2007): 213 x 213 cm (84″ x 84″).  Commercial cottons, cotton thread, polyester batting, backed with heavy black Italian cotton shirting.  Paper foundation block construction.  After “Jewel Squares Window Blind” in Kaffe Fassett‘s Glorious Patchwork (Clarkson Potter 1997).  Machine-pieced and -quilted on a Singer 201-3 (made in Clydebank, Scotland in 1952).

This is my third quilt. Scott and I photographed it at the Thread Bear quilt shop (now closed) in North Van. Thread Bear had a magnificent and enormous second-floor studio-classroom with cathedral ceilings, large high tables, floor to ceiling windows and a view of a pristine salmon stream babbling through the forest outside.

This quilt took a long time to complete. I grew impatient with the quilting and that shows, especially in the middle of the quilt. It’s sloppy craftsmanship, but it’s just fine for snuggling on the couch.

I based this quilt on a pattern I found in Glorious Patchwork by Kaffe Fassett (Clarkson Potter 1997).  The book contains a pattern for a foundation block patchwork blind in a rich assortment of reds.  I wanted to make something larger, so I enlarged the blocks onto tracing paper and decided to use blues.  A few spots of red pay homage to the original.

Foundation block work was interesting.  I sewed the seams in each block right through the tracing paper and then, after sewing the blocks together into the quilt, tore the paper off piece by piece.  I had to leave some strips here and there because removing them would have involved tearing some very stubborn seams.  There’s a faint and strangely comforting crackle in the quilt from time to time.