WIP Wednesday...Project Revealed

It's time to come clean; I've hinted at this project long enough.

My little hamlet was born 100 years ago this year, when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway constructed a branch line between Calgary and Edmonton, via Mirror.  It was named after the newspaper, The London Daily Mirror -- heaven only knows why!  :-)

Anyway, at Mirror, a round house was constructed for a switch point.  The community continued to grow, and was incorporated as a Village on July 27, 1912.  In 1922 the Grand Trunk Pacific merged with the Canadian National Railway, under the name of the latter (CNR).    When steam locomotives gave way to diesel, the round house was no longer required, and was removed.  The village was no longer needed as a switch point to the extent it had been.  Although there is still some rail car switching going on, the population dwindled, and in 2004 the Village 'downsized' to the status of a Hamlet, under the care of the County of Lacombe.  Now sporting a population of 500 on a good day, it remains one of Central Alberta's best-kept secrets: a safe, airy rural community strategically located 1/2-way between the City of Lacombe and the Town of Stettler, 40 minutes NE of Red Deer, 90 minutes south of the provincial capital of Edmonton, and 2 1/2 hours NE of Calgary.


Our 100 Birthday Party will be taking place over the weekend of July 13-15, and the local Museum will be a focus of the celebrations.  I'm a history lover, and although I've been here only 3 1/2 years, I love my wee hamlet home, where every street ends in trees.  I decided I wanted to do something, and it came to me some months ago to make a quilt.  My vision was to sketch out some of the original Mirror landmarks; the best way to do this seemed to be with red work, a type of quilting that became popular in the 1870s -- long before Mirror existed -- but which has experienced revivals from time to time.  A neighbour who volunteers at the Mirror & District Museum sent me photos by e-mail, and put me onto a link at the "Virtual Museum" where I found more.  I was able to enlarge and print 6 photos from which I sketched embroidery outlines on bleached muslin. I found a couple of neighbours to help, but I have embroidered 3 of the 6 blocks, and am almost finished the fourth.  I expect to receive the finished blocks from my friends sometime this week.

The embroidered blocks will be set between six traditional pieced blocks, done in red and white fabric.  I was fortunate to find almost 2 metres of Alex Anderson's red work fabric line, which I believe is no longer in production.  I offset this with white-on-white fabric from my local quilt shop -- Caroline's Homespun Seasons in Stettler.The blocks will be quilted and then attached together with sashing in the block-by-block method, using red sashing on the front, and white on the back.  The backing is wide white cotton backing, also from Homespun.

To date, very few in town know of this project -- but tonight I've been invited to attend a meeting of the Centennial Celebrations Committee, where all will be revealed! (giggle)  The plan, you see, is to donate the quilt to the museum to be raffled as a fund-raiser.  It will be on display during the Centennial Celebration Weekend and tickets sold then.  I imagine the lucky winner will be drawn Sunday afternoon at the closing event(s).

If you're planning a trip through Alberta in July, you just might want to take in the party, and enjoy some old-fashioned entertainment, great food, and perhaps a walk through our pretty hamlet.  You can keep apprised of events with the Centennial's Facebook page.

Oh!  You want to see some of the Work In Progress?  Here it is...

St. Monica's Anglican Church - est. 1895

Mirror Station (no longer standing), built 1911

Three Quilted Blocks - Bank (centre) ca. 1912

I Don't "Swatch"

 Knitters will understand when I say that I don't like to "swatch" -- so much so that I can't recall the last time I did.

A swatch is a sample of knitting prepared before a project to ensure the knitter is able to achieve the correct gauge (stitches and rows per inch) with the yarn and needles he or she is using.

In the textile arts, a swatch is called a 'sample'.  I don't much like sampling, either, but it's becoming ingrained as part of my work in the City & Guilds program -- such that I actually sampled all the way along the process for my latest piece, the 12" square I'm contributing to the SAQA Western Canada Trunk Show, "Meet the Best of the West".  I've already posted a bit about my samples here and here.  Trust me, there have been more than these made in the past few weeks -- under duress because...did I mention I don't like to swatch?

BUT...I grudgingly have to admit that I think it's paid off.  There have been a few 'aha' moments, and I've even managed to learn not to berate myself over the failures -- just to be thankful they were made in the sample and not the finished piece.  Although it needs to be backed and labelled, the tough part is finished.  Ta DA!

"Mutt & Jeff"

Other Finished Objects this week include my final assignment for my Module 5 of the C&G, which I submitted to my tutor this afternoon.  It involved creating an Attic Window (yes, and tackling a  "Y" seam), and auditioning shapes to insert therein.  In the main, it was an exercise in colour/value (creating the window), technique (the "Y" seam), and design (proportion, scale, composition).

Empty window - 'right' side up

Empty window - 'wrong' side up

I was quite surprised by how easy it was to make this, based on the excellent instructions in the course book.

Next, I auditioned a couple of shapes.  Here's one example -- a lone bottle shape.  It looks lonely and dull -- and a bit over-sized for the window frame.

So I made it smaller and added a companion:

Neither of these samples are finished; to do that, I would fuse the shapes into place, stitch, sandwich and quilt -- but that wasn't the purpose of the exercise.  :-)  For now, it will sit on my design wall until called upon in some future assignment.

And then there's this:

It's a companion to this.  More to come...

Slow Quilting of a Different Sort

It's been all about embroidery the past few days chez 3F.  First, I finished my Week 10 Take-A-Stitch(on)-Tuesday block remarkably early.  The stitch de la semaine (of the week) was Running Stitch. (I had great fun with this since this was also the week that my jogging moved up a notch closer to running.  I've gone from an estimated 12 minutes/mile to about 10.78 mpm, and with warmer weather, have lightened up the layers and taken off my hat!)

The wee charm on this piece was resurrected from my jewellry box.  Back when I was a Serious Runner (30 years ago) I wore this on a chain around my neck and was rarely without it.  The cute tape with footsteps on it was a recent find (Wednesday) at a scrap-booking store in Stettler (Pages in Time -- sorry, no website to be found).

But the focus of my work this week has been the 12" square piece I've been working on for the SAQA Western Canada exhibit, "Meet the Best of the West".  This piece hasn't come easily to me, as regular readers no doubt know.  I've struggled and sampled my way through it, fighting the Voices In My Head every step of the way to get my vision from photo into fabric.  I began to make some progress, though, when I began to hand stitch on the piece.  Here's just a taste of it:

While I've stitched I've been taking in online Inspiration to Quilt Expo -- interviews with the nominees for "Most Inspiring Teacher of 2011", quilt galleries, a demo area and of course a merchant mall -- and some more episodes of The Quilt Show, which I absolutely love.

Third in the embroidery line up is a project about which I'm not prepared to say much, but here's a peek:

I'll tell you this much: it's red-work.  This is the first of six embroidered blocks, to be assembled into a quilt with six red-and-white pieced blocks, plus sashing. Stay tuned...

And for a break in the evenings...some knitting on the Dr. Who Scarf, on which I'm making very steady progress: