One of my WIPs is to make a table runner for every holiday, season, and event in our family, to keep the hutch in our front room decorated for our family's treasured occasions. So far table runners for Christmas, Halloween, Summer time, and now Canada Day are complete. This one came as a spark of inspiration on the morning of Canada Day last year. I designed it in the time between our community Pancake Breakfast and the Canada Day Fair, and I sewed this block in between the Fair and our community's awesome fireworks!
I designed this paper pieced block in Electric Quilt, over the image of an official Canadian Flag. I wanted the Maple Leaf to look as accurate as possible as the official flag, and after a handful of attempts it was just right!
It being Canada's 150th birthday in 2017 makes me want to celebrate Canada big! So, my Canada 150 pattern makes a quilt sized 69" x 69" with 18 identical paper pieced blocks, and a table runner as well!
Flying geese had to be part of this pattern as well, of course!
I quilted this on my domestic machine with an asymmetric cross hatch. What’s great about the asymmetric cross hatch quilting, is that a quilt top often already has lines on a 45° angle in your pieced blocks that you can follow. Also, I drew many lines using a Frixion Pen across the table runner on the diagonal, and then I’d echo some of these lines two or three times, and at varying distances from other stitch lines.
I left some areas open and free of quilting, and adversely, I made lots of sew lines intersect in other areas. My only rule was to not leave an unquilted area larger that 4". One thing I will suggest if using this machine quilting stitch is to starch your backing! If you find when one stitch line crosses another that your fabric folds or puckers, starching and pressing your backing can keep that from happening!
I had no idea what I would use for a backing until I realized I had this perfect match in my stash. Seriously, I have the stash of a minimalist, so I expected I'd have to shop for the right backing. I just so happened to have a half metre of this fun fabric! It's from the PB&J collection by Basic Grey.
This backing pulls all the colours from the quilt top together just as I'd hoped!
The pattern is in our Briar Hill Etsy shop! It includes step-by step instructions and illustrations, paper pieces, dry jokes, and a colouring page to help you plan out colour placement, or just for fun!
Happy 150, Canada!
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