Thursday, June 23, 2011

Happy Birthday, Canada-Style


My friend, Joyce had a "special" birthday in May. (I'll let her tell you just how special it was!) Joyce is Canadian, and loves to have tea parties. So for her birthday party, she threw a tea party for 60 people! She is such a "Very High Class" woman/quilter/friend.

To celebrate this special birthday, I made her this small mug rug, using the Canadian flag for the center motif. Joyce lives here in the good ole USA, but retains her Canadian ties.


It wasn't a very hard project. I simply Googled (don't you like when the name of a company become a verb!) "paper-piece-Canadian-flag." I came up with a very straight-forward design on this website. I have to say that I was excited about making this, because I absolutely love Canada's flag! Its two-color design (I also like Switzerland's flag), its simplicity, and the fact that the motif is from nature. (Your national anthem is great, too. "Oh, Canada...") Red and white are such striking colors to work with! I used Kona cottons for this project. The photo below shows the relative size of the mug rug, sitting beside a pen.

For the back I could have gone simple and used either the red or the white fabric, or used one of my red-and-white prints. But I was having fun, so I decided to free-style piece the back together. I started with a base of muslin and started slapping down various size fabric pieces onto it.

Then a simple quilting to highlight the leaf, some red binding, and I was done.

Happy Birthday, Joyce!

6 comments:

  1. I love the Canadian Flag. It's Canada Day here and we have lots of music, food vendors, and activities in the green parts of the city. The stores are all closed, the weather is perfect today, so we are so excited to head downtown with the kids and be part of the fun. I hope you have a great day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like it! I especially like your free form back with the flag stitches showing through. Nice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Happy Canada Day, Gail!

    Thanks, Harmony. Red and white are so good together, aren't they!?!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very nice!! You can't beat red and white together!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lovely little quilt! You are so right, time does fly. I was riding a bike too big for me with pig tails flying in the wind behind me when our Expo 67 and my love of the Canadian flag really began. I was nine.
    Real good to connect. I've found HarmoneyArt. Thanks for that!
    Carli

    ReplyDelete