Minneonto

Minneonto, photo transfers on muslin, machine pieced, hand quilted.

I made this little quilt as a sample when I was teaching for a weekend conference put on by a quilt shop in Sudbury, Ontario.  The shop wanted me to teach a project would use new fabrics that they could pre-cut and sell.

It was the only time I've created a kit.  Participants brought their own high contrast photo copies of family photos, and I showed them how to use xylene blending markers to make clear transfers.  Those markers have since been banned.

The photos are of my parents in the early years of their marriage.  They had just purchased the highway farm ten miles out of Fort Frances where I grew up.  You can just glimpse the old granary that my father converted into a house in the above photo.  His friend Wally helped to tear the ancient barn down and push the granary into a new place for their house.

I gave this wall hanging to my father the Christmas after I made it, but my parents did not hang it because my younger sister Nancy was not included.  She wasn't yet born when the photo above was taken.  Silly me for this casual omission.

I call this piece Minneonto because one of my father's many achievements in the North Western Ontario community of LaVallee-Fort Frances area was to help bring television to the area.  Relay towers were put up from Duluth Minnesota along Highway 53 north to the border town of International Falls. I remember having to use a converter for years to get a signal until CBC towers were built north of Devlin.

1997
Number 90