Nova Scotia Quilts

Archive for the ‘hand quilting’ Category

We woke up to 6 inches of wet, heavy, yucky snow yesterday morning and I had to get the neighbour with his snowblower down to deal with it! Blech!! I’m reading lots of seed catalogues and wishing these days!
It is helping me to get lots of quilting done though. I have a major quilt at the handquilting phase right now and I’m very pleased with it indeed. A well, I am dealing with a couple of smaller commissions, which present seperate challenges – this is always fun!
The quilt kit shown above is one of my vintage Paragon kits complete with suitable floss for embroidery – I looked it out and photographed it for a prospective purchaser who found the king sized version a bit large for her bed and so passed on it.

One of my “recreational” projects is an online tutorial for my “Sea Creatures” quilt (http://www.quiltingwithjanet.blogspot.com) and I find I am going to end up with two seperate concepts for the same basic idea – these smaller quilts – child sized or wall hanging size will be for sale when I have completed them or sooner if you want to contact me. I am working on building up some stock for the “walk-in” tourist traffic I get at my quilt studio because of its location near the very popular destinaton of Hall’s Harbour, Nova Scotia, so I expect these smaller quilts will go quickly.

Shown below is one of two amish style strippy quilts I am currently handquilting. I have become fascinated with the endless variations that can be achieved withing the framework of solids only and limited colour palette, and I find I keep returning to play with ideas.

Check here for the link to my other blog – quilting with janet.blogspot.com

This is a quilt I have just finished handpiecing and begun to hand quilt. It is my version of a quilt in the collection of the State Museum of Pennsylvania and dates to the 19th century. The colours red, green and ochre are commonly used amoung the pennsylvania dutch in particular and in the northeastern United States and Canada in general.
It has been thrilling to make this quilt, and in particular so gratifying to see how easily the blocks and strips come together when hand piecing is used rather than machine piecing.
After this quilt and a couple of smaller commissions are completed, I am hoping to get several of my vintage and antique quilt tops ready for hand quilting, and also to make several other quilts using 19th centrury reproduction fabrics. Of you are interested in exploring any of these possibilities, please contact me at mailto:janet@novascotiaquilts.com

Most of my life I have been a terrible packrat and collector and I have come to the realization that I need to start weeding out my collections – have made a New Year’s resolution to do that and it may be easier than the second one to get fitter and lose some weight. I need to concentrate specially my collections of vintage quilt kits, both cross stitched (Paragon and Tobin)and applique and Doublestencil Smithsonian whole cloth and wholecloths embellished with needleturn applique.
In addition I have a huge supply of fabrics, mostly 19th century reproduction, amish-style solids and 1930’s both repro and genuine feedsack. As well I have a fair supply of 1970’s and 80’s tiny flowered calicos. Time to get sewing on my own planned projects so I will only rarely now be accepting commissions to hand quilt others’ quilt tops and now and then will accept a quilt restoration if I am intrigued enough. I am hoping my new commission clients may be interested in letting me surprise them after choosing colours and type of quilt – my creative juices are currently becoming frustrated! I have many antique and vintage quilt tops to be finished too.
As well, I have collected and dealt in Nova Scotian Folk Art for at least 30 years and am planning on keeping only a few sentimental pieces such as the fine Elmer Killen carving of a man and team plowing, which was left to me in my mother’s estate.
I also have smalls of all sorts to go.
Basically I’d suggest you contact me with your wish list and we’ll see what we can find – once the snow is gone and the tourists are here again I will be open 7 days a week and expect my collections to move fast, so perhaps checking out my inventory now is a good idea!
I am reaching the point in life where I want to do more of my own design projects and am also embarking on teaching online as my main occupation, so it makes sense to downsize. As well I am looking at some fairly extensive maintainance for my almost 200 year old home so reducing the stuff that will need to be pushed around from place to place makes a lot of sense to me!!!.