Nova Scotia Quilts

Archive for the ‘quilt studio’ Category

Welcome to my home on the internet! And also to my home in real time in a very farflung corner of eastern North America!

By the early 1980’s, like many young well educated Maritimers, I had been living and working in central Canadsa for nearly twenty years. I decided it was time to at least return home during the summer months, and as I was working in a specialized educational setting, that was possible. So I pored over realtors’ catalogues and finally settled on a house with a small piece of land that was affordable and appealed to me. It had not been lived in for some years and had no plumbing or well but was basically sound and in original condition.

I had chosen an 1820’s cape style house near the Bay of Fundy fishing village and tourist destination of Hall’s Harbour – you can check the map below, but what it doesn’t tell you is that my area is high on a range of hills called the North Mountain, which shelters the farming land of the Annapolis Valley below it and historically provided access to sea routes for shipping produce.  The area has always been very isolated and ruggedly independent, but now in the ensuing 30 years since I chose to move home completely, has become much more accessible with paved roads and better maintenance. We still support only about 250 households, many of us aging and some of us only summer residents.

Below is a picture of my house, taken in winter early in the morning with the remnants of a hoar frost. My home is primarily heated with wood – both ecologically more sustainable than my alternates which would be coal generated electric, or oil heat and even more pertinent, much more affordable – for a little extra work I get to spend less than half what the alternatives would cost.

Moving back home meant I had to take whatever work was available in my region, and for some years I worked at jobs in elder care and in residential group home support for challenged young adults.

During that time, I developed a sideline business making completely handcrafted quilts and handknits, one of  the quilts  is shown below. I advertised to the tourist trade and until tourism in eastern Canada collapsed in the wake of the realities that followed 9/11, I had a busy and profitable small weekend business.

Somewhere in this time period, my daughter who was in the process of developing her marketing, seo and web design skills offered me the gift of a website – this one – and as website management became more  do-able for amateurs like me she set me up with access to the WordPress.org system which I use today.

At first I marketed my own quilts and handknits, and a small inventory of folk art and still receive orders through this source but over the years my strong interest in social history had led me to the magic of traditional quilts and more specifically to collecting the lovely quilt kits of the early to mid 20th century.

Before I knew it, I had amassed a very large inventory of these treasures, and in addition had also bought completed quilts from kits, and completed but unquilted quilt tops. I began receiving questions and requests about these kits, and as the tourism business slowed, I was able to channel my direction into promoting the sale of my carefully curated and extremely large inventory of vintage and antique quilt kits.

This is a highly specialized area of collecting, and I know of no other online store that carries the number, quality  and variety of quilt kits that I do – at  any moment I have on hand about 150 vintage kits, applique, embroidery, whole cloth and some carefully selected pieced kits. They come in a variety of sizes – from baby, youth, wallhanging size through twin, double and queen/king.

At the moment I am offering free shipping anywhere in North America with insurance and tracking, using the SEARCH function in the top left hand corner of my home page, browse according to specific interests or check my page with my inventory listings – there is a link to that on the right hand sides under favourites.

Feel free to contact me janet@novascotiaquilts.com personal and very thoughtful service.

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