Guest Speaker: Rosemary Makhan

I feel so bad, I was so wrapped up in taking photos and looking at Rosemary's amazing quilts that I actually wasn't listening to what she said, so this post may be lacking in details, I hope to make it up in photos...although photos cannot do justice to the finer details of her work.

Her work is exquisite! The details amazing! In this quilt top below, a tribute to Princess Diana after her death, you can see the amazing detail of the 3 dimensional flowers made from ribbons and a bit of bead work.

She's used all methods of applique from raw edge blanket applique to invisible thread machine applique. She hand quilts her pieces or she machine quilts her pieces. She loves them both. Her quilting only enhances her applique and never appears rushed or an afterthought.

Above, she often uses trapunto to emphasize her feathery quilting.
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​On the top side of this quilt she used invisible thread to machine applique the pieces, on the reverse side she used variegated thread for the machine quilting, to make the back equally amazing to look at.

​After all these years of quilting she is trying to make her quilts more Canadian, as she notes there are not enough patterns out there there that are truly Canadian. She does this by choosing flowers, animals that are found here. She is even trying to create a repertoire of blocks that represent Canada or Canadian symbols.

​Below, in this sampler, each of the blocks represent a province or territory of Canada.

Below, the bouquet contains Ontario wild flowers.
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Below, is a wall hanging of the Nova Scotia Bluenose as seen on the Canadian dime, with Scottish thistles representing the Scottish heritage of the province, and Mayflower, the official provincial flower and wild blueberries the official berry native to Nova Scotia.

Rosemary recently sold her last copy of the book Biblical Blocks, she said she was sad to see it go it was almost like saying good-bye to a friend. She loves to see photos of other quilters' versions of her quilts and asks for quilters to send her their photos where she may share them on her blog.

You can view all the photos here.

On behalf of the LFQG, thank you Rosemary, for a wonderful trunk show!