The Great Northern Exhibition

A couple of weeks ago we ended up at the 'Great Northern Exhibition' or the 'GNE', just outside Collingwood.  It's a grand name for the Collingwood Fall Fair, and I'm sure the name is a take-off on the famous 'CNE', the Canadian National Exhibition that runs for a month in Toronto every summer.  I"m sure every teenager in Ontario has made it to the CNE at least once!

We arrived just in time for the antique tractor parade.  You certainly saw some brands that have long since disappeared, like this "Minneapolis-Moline" tractor.  Owners have put an incredible amount of work into restoring most of these.  More tomorrow.

We caught a bit of the 4H show, here the winner of a class we watched.

There were lots of cattle tied along a fence, most looking lazy if not actually sleepy!  I used to know the common breeds of cattle fairly well, but I'm not going to guess for these.

We just missed the sheep-shearing demonstration, but you can see the shearing cuts on the wool of this lamb.  The shearer was still talking to the audience - you know he can shear a sheep in something like 28 seconds!

Then there was the quilt show.  As Mr. Furry Gnome, I've picked up a little wee bit of understanding over the years from Mrs. F.G., my star quilter and fibre artist wife.  So I actually paid attention to the labels on these.  This show sensibly divided the quilts into classes, so the one above is the winner of the hand-quilted class, a beautiful quilt.

And this one was the winner of the machine-quilted class.  Yes, many if not most quilts nowadays are quilted on large machines, usually by an expert who has invested in the machine for a business.  I've seen quilting machines that sit there quilting all by themselves, computer driven - and costing more than a small car!

If you take a close look you can see the difference.  Traditional hand-quilted quilts like this normally have the stitches along the seams of the different fabric pieces.  The challenge is keeping the stitches evenly spaced and tiny.

Machine quilting on the other hand enables you to superimpose a swirling pattern of stitches like this that provides a totally different quilt pattern on top of the underlying fabric pattern.  Note that the triangular pieces don't quite meet precisely in the centre; very well done, but that's the sort of detail the judges look for.  I've become quite judgemental at quilt shows!

This amount of detailed piecing on the quilt astonished me.  Piecing is cutting the fabric into little tiny pieces to create the design, and then sewing them all together.  That's the part of quilting that Mrs. F.G. likes the best.

This on the other hand, though it's a detailed pattern with the hockey players, is actually just a single piece of fabric with the picture printed on it - no piecing or design involved.  But a very popular way to do quilts, especially for children who might have a particular interest.  Mrs. F.G. has done several, most recently a butterfly and caterpillar picture, for our young grand-daughter.

That's about the extent of my knowledge of quilting!  But this was a well-organized show, with several different categories, and quilts open to view rather than wrapped in plastic as at some fairs.