Spring 2012 Bloggers Quilt Festival

If you have arrived here for the first time through the Bloggers Festival, welcome to Tamarack Shack.   I am a professional longarm quilter that lives on the shores of Schist Lake in Northern Manitoba Canada. I love to photograph my quilts and my clients quilts outdoors all year round. It is just as much fun as quilting the quilts. In winter the snowy backdrop and the ice from the lake make a wonderful setting and in the summer the water on the lake provides a wonderful shimmer when the quilts are displayed on the dock. My neighbor clothesline also provided a great spot to see the whole quilt...when the wind isn't blowing!

The quilt I chose to share this time is my Scrappy Squares quilt. This was a project that our guild did and we exchanged 3" fabric squares.  What I loved about his quilt is all the background space to play with quilting designs as the quilting is my favorite part.

My longarm is hand guided so all my work is free hand or ruler assisted.
I did CC's in the squares and then added feathered wreaths and other feather motifs in the borders.

I created a faux border in the background to mimic the pieced squares in the inner border.  Then feathered the outer border in a flowing curled pattern.

Here is a peek at the back.

I finished this quilt in December of 2011 when the ice on the lake was crystal clear where my boys had there ice hockey rink.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of the quilt over top of all the cracks in the ice...just wish the sun shone that day so you could see the quilting in this picture as well.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting.   Enjoy the rest of the festival, I know I'll be on my computer a lot this week checking out all the great eye candy!

Kathy

Beveled Blocks

This is another quilt pieced by Rae and the pattern is by Aardvark Quilts called Beveled Blocks.  I just love this pattern as it has such great visual impact with the bold light dark color contrasts.

I also love the batik fabrics she picked too.  The panto Rae chose is called Splash and it soft lines really complement the geometric design of the quilt.

Great backing fabric too!

Fantasia

This is Rae's quilt and she used a pattern called Serenity by Cozy Quilt Designs. She used soft beige, brown and green fabrics and they remind me of the color of sand on a beach, it has a very calm and soothing feeling to it.

She asked for a loftier batting so we chose Quilter's Dream Cotton Deluxe so the panto design would stand out more and it worked beautifully.   She chose Fantasia for a panto design to add some more interest to the quilt. I haven't used this one that much but I really like it and it worked perfect on this quilt.

The backing had a soft butterfly print and the design on the panto looks a bit like butterfly wings.

Redwork Landscape Quilt

This is Karen's Redwork Landscape quilt that she pieced using 25 redwork squares of her own original design. Each square was based on paintings that she made from her travels to Haines Alaska, Whitehorse Yukon, her hometown of Flin Flon Manitoba and her current residence in Invermere B.C.  Karen would sketch her designs on location and then create watercolor painting based on those sketches.

Here is a close up of one of the redwork blocks.

And here is one of Karen's paintings that see used as inspiration for her redwork design above.  This painting is of a shoreline scene from Pickeral Bay in the Flin Flon area and is about 5"x 7" in size.

Here is another image from the Flin Flon area and is the view from the Ski Hill from Tobacco Road.

Here is the painting it is inspired from.

I just did a simple meander on the log cabin areas of the blocks as she did not want me to quilt over the redwork squares.

What a wonderful way to capture the memories of places visited by sketching, painting and then embroidering the scenes into fabric.  

Retreat Report

I just got back from the weekend Retreat at Bakers Narrows Lodge and had a great time.  My favorite part was meeting quilters that I had never meet before. Lots of laughs, good food, great conversations...and a little bit of quilting! You can check out our guild's blog post on the retreat here.  Sandra took some great pictures.

We all set up our machines in the lodge's log cabin Great Hall and had our meals here too. It was so nice to not have to cook or do dishes!

The inside had nice high ceiling and a large stone fireplace.  The lighting was not the best so next time we will all bring our own little desk lamps.

I was able to finish piecing one of my projects.  I had to use my 'design wall' to layout my blocks as space was at a premium.  It is just an inexpensive vinyl tablecloth with a flannel-like backing and the fabric blocks stick to the backing very well. This picture was taken before I sewed all the blocks together...I didn't get a picture of it sewn together but it is done.. honest :)

I also started my second project this morning but didn't have enough time to get all the block together.

Here is the little cabin I slept in.

And here is the view from the Hall looking out onto Lake Athapapuskow.  You can see just a little ice left in this area of the lake. 

Before I left on Friday I was able to get a few good shots of the loons in our bay on Schist Lake. They finally started to cooperate and let me take their picture. 

I also took two videos with my camera so the quality and sound are not the best as it was windy out.

There were three loons...and this time of year three is a crowd!

I loaded my videos onto YouTube to improve the quality, much better now.

Weekend Retreat!

 I have been trying the last couple of days to get a picture of the loons that have returned. I had to hide behind the trees so they wouldn't dive under and swim away, they usually are not so shy. You can see another pair in the open water in the distance.

This weekend I am going to a quilting retreat at Baker's Narrows Lodge.  I have only ever been to our guild retreats which were just during the days and then you go home at night. But at this retreat we get to stay overnight in the cabins and have our meals prepared!!  And if I forget anything the lodge of only 5 minutes from my house so it isn't far to run home and get! I am looking forward to meeting new quilters from the other surrounding towns as there will be 25 of us.

The only down side to this weekend is I pinched a nerve in my back on Tuesday and it is still bothering me.  Can you believe it happened when I threw a teabag in the garbage can....WHAM...I couldn't move!  I can't believe I got knocked down by a teenie weenie teabag....seriously...why not when I was raking the yard or helping Tim put the dock in water!!  How embarrassing!

Anyway here are my two projects I am going to work on at the retreat and that will put me in a better mood.  I hope to have two complete tops to show you on Monday!

Orange HST Strip Quilt

This is the second quilt I have quilted for Dawn this month and this one is a beautiful orange and white quilt that just says 'spring'!

I used the Feather Curls panto and just love the border fabric she used.

She pieced the backing with extra fabrics from the top.

I can finally use the neighbors clothesline again!  Love how the green in the quilt matches the evergreens.

Candle Ice

A few more days and the ice will be gone.  :)   The ice is starting to candle and when you play with it it makes a very distinct clinking or tinkling sound like breaking wine glasses. 

View from the top.

When you grab a piece it has a long narrow crystal or 'candle' shape and about 4 or 5 inches long.  If we get any strong winds in the next few days the ice will go quickly.  Once it starts moving around our bay it makes a loud 'tinkling' sound as it hits the dock and the rocks on our shoreline. I love to listening to that sound as it means spring is here.

We had another cool experience with ice in 2007 and I wish I had taken more pictures.

Yes that is a layer of ice a foot off the ground stuck in the trees...any guesses how this happened?  I'll give you a hint....spring melt, freeze then thaw.

Our ditch across the road floods every year until the culverts that drain the water to lake side thaws out.  One night it went below freezing and created a 1/4" layer of ice but by morning the culvert had opened and all the water drained from underneath leaving the layer of ice in the trees. It was so cool!!  

The ice covered the road and this is what it looked like after the boys had fun walking on it and cracking it.  Okay I got into the action too!  :)  Who could resist that fun?  Crinkle, crunch, crinkle, crunch!!

Just Takes 2 - Part 8

Here is part 8 of the Just Takes 2 project.  I am happy to report I got all my blocks done before May 1st when the next set of instructions come out.  Part 7 had included the layout for the set of blocks done up to that point and I just now got around to laying them out to take a look at how it is shaping up.   You can see I have a hole in mine...that one block is suppose to be hand pieced and is still waiting to be made.  I think seeing this all laid out might just motivate me to get it done.

  

I'm not sure where my recent blocks will go in the layout but here they are with the rest of them.

The jury is still out whether I like this project or not.  I'm definitely working out of my comfort zone color wise and I usually don't like to make sampler quilts!  But I really like to try new things and it is using up a lot of my hand dyed scraps so I won't judge it until it is all done.

Chickens

See the chickens!  This is Dawn's quilt and she used fun chicken themed fabrics to make her quilt.  I think this is a variation on the Hunters Star pattern.

When I first saw this quilt I thought I would quilt feathers on it to go with the chicken and feather prints.  But after some thought I realized that feathers would just compete with the print on the fabrics and be too busy of a quilting design.  So freehand 3's and E's became the final choice.  Swirls always look great on any quilt!

 For the backing Dawn chose a cool chicken wire print fabric.