Monday, February 08, 2016

Hockey Day in Canada Landscape Quilt

Did you know (or care) that Saturday was Hockey Day in Canada? I found out when my husband wished me a Happy Hockey Day! I know that it's a big deal in many places in Canada, with special games and events. I don't personally follow any of it, but I appreciate that people care about our national sport.

The green and blue stripped background fabric is from Paris.
The shiny green and blue stripped background fabric is from Paris.
A few weeks ago I decided to play with fabric that my brother got for me from Paris. He found a store that was going out of business and got some lovely samples, remnants and a couple of yards of some great fabric. The fabric is mostly upholstery weight in linen and other fibers. I'm sure I'll be able to incorporate them into art quilt projects eventually.

I chose a piece that had a cool vibe to it - something that might be used for a winter project. I played with the fabric and got very frustrated, so I did what I usually do then, I left it there overnight to get a fresh perspective in the morning. It worked!  I started working with the little bit of winter scene fabric that I have, and then raided my Christmas stash.

From my stash and bag of scraps, I found the little bit of hockey fabric as well as some interesting blue-grey for the ice.

An old fashioned winter scene
An old fashioned winter scene
The winter scene fabric I bought last summer has an old fashion winter landscape with houses, barns and trees. In my Christmas fabric stash were these wonderful deer and the trees.

To try and get it to work together, I created sections within the piece by using a blue-green fussy cut fabric.

I had a lot of fun with the sky. I found a couple of pieces of an interesting night sky and then found this tulle with stars in my stash. I had used it years ago to decorate my cubicle for a Christmas cubicle decorating contest.
Tulle sky and snowflakes
After free motion quilting the piece, I added some more wooden fabric as the binding and quilted that too.

In my stash I found snowflakes, trees and added a snowman. As I told my daughter, I'm not sure how I feel about the landscape. It was fun to play with and is really a collage. Art quilts don't all have to be serious, do they?


What I learned:

  • I didn't plan this piece (what else is new), so I ended up unstitching the long blue-green columns sticking out of the picture to put the wooden border around the piece. 
  • As I mentioned, if things are not working out, it's best to just leave the project and come back to it later. So far, it always works!
  • When I make a collage type landscape, I feel like I'm cheating, but really trying to pull all of these different elements together is probably more work than creating a landscape from scratch.
  • I haven't decided if I pulled it off - if you want to offer me some constructive criticism, I would certainly appreciate it.
So, Happy Hockey Day in Canada! May your favourite team win. :-)







8 comments:

  1. What a fun project. Great for Hockey Day! Thanks for sharing with Oh Scrap!

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    1. Thanks Cynthia, it was fun making it and I got to use scraps!

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  2. Thanks sharing this new piece of information as I never heard about Hockey Day! :) I think your piece is really great: it's well balanced and I think you picked several interesting bits that are just enough to make the piece fun to look at but they are not overwhelming. Great job!!

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    1. Thank you very much Alida. It`s so hard to know when enough is enough. I appreciate your feedback.

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  3. Art quilt pieces are so interesting to me. It takes a lot of creativity and awareness of color to create great pieces and you've done that here. Thanks so much for sharing on MCM!

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    1. Thanks Beth. When you do your own thing, it's hard to judge it. Is it too much, not enough etc. Thanks for your support. Love your linky parties.

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  4. What a fun piece! I've been aware of Hockey Day for a few years...it's been a Big Deal out here in Central Alberta where a couple of bergs have entered the competition for the title of "Hockey Town" (at least that's what I think it's called!)...so your piece is very apt!

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    1. Thanks Margaret. A couple of towns around here have competed for that honour. Hockey is taken pretty seriously around here!

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