As promised, here is a report about the Heritage Park quilt show. I managed to get a very fast tour in last Saturday. Hubby graciously let me escape the backyard mess and the girls for a couple of hours alone, surrounded by history and quilts. Peace.
Heritage Park is a historical village that demonstrates life on the Prairies and in the Calgary area. For the quilt show they display the quilts throughout the park - in tents on the grass, in the different homes and buildings, and even on the buildings and fences. Wandering through the park you can see the park entertainment, visit the buildings, and enjoy the quilts.
To be honest, I didn't find much of inspiration in the show. In fact, the day confirmed that I really don't have a traditional bent for quilting, not at all. I can appreciate craftsmanship and good use of colour, but earth tones and traditional piecing kind of bore me. Sorry to those who love it. I'm sure my stuff is too much for some people as well. To each their own.
Here is the biggest building on site - the Wainwright Hotel. I love how they hang the quilts from the verandas. If you look closely, you can see my Tuesday Night Quilt hanging on the lower veranda. The next picture shows it better.
See, there it is, hung randomly by that crane. It doesn't seem like there is much thought put in to the relation of quilts from one to the next. They do have 500 quilts to show after all.
Here is my
black and white quilt. Honestly, I was a little disappointed with the display of this one. I didn't mind that it was inside a building, but folded in half and hanging over a counter? You certainly lose the impact. Oh well.
Other than the fact that they hung this one the wrong way (see the original
here), I thought it kind of looked neat on the washing line. This building is actually the Chinese Laundry. My black and white quilt was at the front of the building, and this was in one of the back display rooms.
Is it just me, or does
this quilt look out of place in a replica turn of the century hospital?
This is a pretty traditional quilt. Despite what I said above, I liked this one, especially the quilting. Mostly the quilting.
My picture doesn't do this quilt justice. The use of fabric and colour was amazing - the quilt was luminous.
I'm showing a close-up of this one. These are actually square blocks, can you tell? If anyone has seen something like this elsewhere, please let me know. Otherwise I'll be studying the photo to figure it out, a lot.
The front of this quilt was nice, but I loved the back! Those are gorgeous fabrics, but there was no note as to what they were. They were ridiculously vivid. The front had fabric with elephants and hindu gods, so I'm almost wondering if it was an Indian cotton?
Under the category of "why didn't I think of that?" comes this monster quilt. So, so cool. And the detailed quilting was phenomenal.
Here it is on the line behind the school, with some other kids quilts.
Heritage Park also has a number of vintage quilts in the Park's collection. Isn't this one gorgeous? I can't go anywhere without finding circles!
By far, this was my favourite of the day. It is too bad the shade is dappled because it takes away from the luminosity of the quilt. Interestingly, this quilt is made up of the same block, repeated. At first glance it looks improv, but it isn't. Unfortunately, there was no detail on the construction. I can tell you that it is a lot of small pieces! Don't you love the colour gradation?
I just love this image this display the best out of any in the park.
This is a Bento Box, but the entire thing is done with Denyse Schmidt. I'm sure there are some of you out there who will love this, I took the photo just for you.
Oh, and in case you are wondering why I didn't share the artists or names of the quilts it's because the program has already been recycled. Oops, sorry.
I have my Hubby to thank for getting some quilting done this week. No, he didn't magically win the lottery so I could quit working, nor did he take the girls out every evening so I had no interruptions. But he had a busy week at work, so he was too bagged at the end of the day to do much work on the fence. That meant I didn't have to work on the fence. As much as I would love a fence, I really appreciated the quilting time.
Just to get an idea of the potential size of the finished quilt I laid them out on the grass in the park across the street. Eyeballing it I would call this a large lap size at this point. Maybe 60 inches square, depending on layout, or even up to twin sized. The layout above with very random and done without any thought. But it does make me happier with the project overall. It has the general feel I wanted. I think it will come together into something interesting.
My next few posts are going to be photos of potential layouts. I would appreciate any opinions or input. I'm sure I'll have more stuff to piece and bits to cut out along the way. And I have a few ideas for how it could all come together, but we'll have to see. In the meantime, the grass across the street will be decked out in fabric. I've got no design wall currently so that is the only place I can spread things out to see. Let's hope there is no wind or rain in the coming days. Oh wait, if there is no wind or rain I'm on fence duty. Crap. Quilt or finish my fence and get a yard again? Rock, meet the hard place. 
Isn't this a cool photo? A grass-eyed view of the quilt.
