Canadian Birds {Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2013}

Its time again for the Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2013 hosted by Amy's Creative Side, thanks Amy for doing all this to organize it!

I thought maybe, I'd enter my favourite quilt in the category of:

• Favorite hand quilted quilt
• Please vote for my Canadian Birds in the category of Hand Quilting.

You may have seen this one in past posts of mine and its really a dream come true to have in on my bed all winter long. I'm itching for snow to come, then it can come permanently on the  bed for the winter. My hubby and I have a 'thing' about 'warm' quilts. He's the furnace and I'm the chillin cold feet person.

This quilt entitled "Canadian Birds" is my own design, hand quilted by me and it took me about 6 1/2 months of hand quilting in the evenings only, to complete the whole hand quilting.

But there is so much more to this quilt. It endured 5 home relocations across one end of British Columbia and many starts and then was put away, so many times that it actually took 12 years to finish it.

The photo above is me at a fun quilting retreat that I attended in Port Coquitlam with Quilters Connection Magazine. The ladies helped encourage me to finish it! And I did.

This is what it looks like on our  bed! This quilt is exactly 120 in. by 120 in. and the batting is wool batting, it makes it slightly heavier than other quilts with cotton batting, but it makes it sooooo warm and lovely, I can hardly wait for snow to come!

This quilt is my husband's quilt. I made it for him because he's a biologist and told me about the fabric that was limited edition called Endangered Birds of Canada I think, he'd seen it the window of a fabric store! Good on him for even looking. Quilters husband's are cool!

I hand quilted the whole quilt between Jan and June of 2012 on the hoop that I won for my winning entry of Silver Linings Crazy Quilt.

I have seen many quilts from the past using what I think is a clamshell type of half circle. I decided to do this style on the outside borders of this quilt. I am self taught  in hand quilting, except once I happened to be in Washington state and witnessed the quilter awarded

• Please vote for my Canadian Birds in the category of Hand Quilting.

I have laid a line of hand quilting along the center and outside of each flower, then outside of the block. I love the soft texture of hand quilting that simply cannot be matched by any machine. My only wish is that I had friends to quilt something this big with, to chat with and scheme on new quilts, just like an old fashioned quilting bee. I really love this blue tree fabric from Cloud 9 Fabric, who specializes in organic fabric.

• Please vote for my Canadian Birds in the category of Hand Quilting.
• Remember to vote for my quilt in Hand Quilting on November 1 – 7 – Vote for your favourites in each of the categories
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• Thanks for reading and seeing my hand quilting. This was a thick quilt to actually hand quilt and so my stitches are not perfectly 10 stitches to one rock.

Bye for now, Carli

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