TGIFF! - Canadiana à la Hudson's Bay

Buoy in St. Andrews-
By-The-Sea,
New Brunswick

Welcome to the next TGIFF! party for OctoberQuest! Is the opportunity of winning one of two $50 gift certificates to Mad About Patchwork getting you to pull out that WIP or UFO to finish? We hope so! Also don't forget that you can also get 10% off your purchases throughout the month by using the TGIFF10 code.

My finish this week is about six months in the making, but has been on my wish list much longer. The Hudson's Bay Company's point blankets have an interesting and not-always-positive history. I had one as a child and although I loved the colours, I always found the wool too itchy. Why not try the design in a quilt?

Quick recap:

Front:

Back:

There were a couple of things that stumped me with this one, the first being that I wanted to match the thread to the colours on the front and was worried about the coloured top threads showing up on the back. Also, I was unsure how to keep the back stripes perpendicular and square to the front ones and how to keep the tight horizontal straight-line quilting from distorting the vertical stripes on the back. I hemmed and hawed, wondering if there were some tricks or techniques I could use, but ultimately I knew that I had to baste very carefully and just do it.

And done it is! Woo hoo!

Front - Canadiana

Back - Canadiana

Detail - Straight-line quilting

For the straight-line quilting in the off-white areas, I tried using a hera marker to help mark the straight line. Not successful on white or such a wide quilt. I kept losing where the line was. Once again, I forgot to use the little straight-line quilting guide that came with my walking foot. D'oh!

Distortion on
the back from
the quilting

Back - Flips on the monkey bars

Even though I did stabilize the quilt by quilting every four inches first, there were a few areas of the vertical stripes on the back that did get slightly distorted when I filled it in. Not enough to make me unpick though. It's the back after all and this quilt is going to be used until it's threadbare, stained and holey. Lesson learned: stabilize it every two or even one inch before filling in more densely.

For the colour pops of thread on the back that I worried about, I tightened the top tension just a little bit so that the top thread wouldn't show on the back -- it worked very well!

Now I have my own soft, cuddly HBC point blanket quilt! And you can too. I posted the instructions for the top back in May and I will post the material requirements and instructions for the back and binding of this quilt soon.

Now it's your turn, fine people! Link up those fab finishes, grab a glass of something fine and give thanks for the week that was.

A reminder of the rules for OctoberQuest:

1. Your quilty project must be completely finished (As much as we love celebrating quilt tops or completed blocks, they will not be eligible for the prizes).
2. You may enter more than one finish and even more than one finish each week. Just add a link for each finish to one of the linky parties. The linky parties will stay open from their start date until the end of the month.
3. Your post/photo on Flickr/Picasa must have a link back to the TGIFF! site and the particular party you are participating in. 
4. Link up your quilty finish in any of the TGIFF! linky parties this month:
• October 5 -  Janice @ Better Off Thread
• October 12 - M-R @ Quilt Matters
• October 19 - Jenelle @ Echinops and Aster
• October 26 - Lynette @ What a Hoot
5. OctoberQuest will be open until October 31st at 11:59 p.m. EST. A winner will be picked via Ms. Random Number Generator on November 1st and notified via email. Please make sure we can contact you via email or we will need to run Ms. Random again.

I'm also linking up with Sew Modern Monday at CanoeRidge Creations. Some great modern inspiration over there!